Impacts on the environmental landscape caused by alterations in the new Forest Code

Abstract

With the adoption of Law number 12.651 in the new Forest Code, some alterations caused great discussion among environmentalists and farmers, some more impactful than others, but all somewhat important. The present study sought to assess the environmental impact caused in an area of approximately 5 thousand hectares, considering only the point where the New Forest Code considers valid the reckoning of Permanent Preservation Areas of Legal Reserve. The value found in this study shows the great impact that this point of the new law could cause at medium and long term on areas of legal reserve, impacting the local landscape. We also emphasize that, considering or not the PPAs in the sum of legal reserve areas, the area in study is far from the required adequate values, regarding environmental matters required by law, which generally occurs in rural areas, indicating the lack of supervision by the competent bodies. As a tool for this study, we used geoprocessing techniques for the assembling of the photographic mosaic and scaling of the aerial images.