Environmental Zoning of the Camaquã State Park – Brazil

Abstract

Brazil is one of the most megadiverse countries in the world and protected areas are the key to preserving environmental systems that remain from historical threats, such as urbanization, mining, planting of exotic species, and the expansion of agricultural activities like farming and livestock. Environmental zoning is the main tool for the management of protected areas as it is a useful option to mitigate conflicts and a key prescriptive tool for protected areas administration. This paper provides an environmental zoning of the Camaquã State Park (CSP), Brazil. The methodological guideline of the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources was used with adaptations for the study area. It comprises: (i) the analysis of land use/cover changes (supporting land cover conservation criteria); (ii) the analysis of the geomorphological changes (supporting environmental variability criteria); and (iii) the identification and delimitation of homogeneous units for environmental zoning from the combination of land use/cover and geomorphological spatiotemporal data. This assessment was performed by mapping land use/cover and geomorphological changes in the study area in 1964 and 2012 scenarios. Results show that land covers have decreased 3.2%, while land uses had an increase of 12.8%. Irrigated rice represents the main vector of occupation and geomorphological changes. Anthropogenic landforms have had an increase of 189% and served as indicators for the delimitation of impacted areas. Five environmental zones were identified in the CSP, however, two occupy more than 70% of the study area: Intangible zone (40%) and recovery zone (34%). The zoning presented can only be applied in its entirety after land regularizing in the protected area.