Land use in Permanent Preservation Areas of Grande River (MG)

Carlos Delano Cardoso De Oliveira,Fausto Weimar Acerbi Júnior,Luís Antônio Coimbra Borges

doi:10.1590/2179-8087.023015

Carlos Delano Cardoso De Oliveira, Fausto Weimar Acerbi Júnior + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1590/2179-8087.023015

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Abstract

ABSTRACT The Brazilian Forestry Code established the Permanent Preservation Areas (PPAs) to preserve environmentally significant areas, such as the banks of waterways. Grande River is an important Brazilian river whose watercourse contains several hydroelectric plants, with few PPAs containing original features. Thus, this study analyzed land use in PPAs of a non-dammed stretch of the upper Rio Grande, in southern Minas Gerais. For this analysis, we used an image of the Rapideye sensor and the Maximum Likelihood classification method. The results showed the occurrence of pastures (49.63%), exposed soil (9.13%), others (0.77%), water (0.15%) and ornamental vegetation (0.13%) while the remaining native vegetation represented only 40.19% of PPAs. These numbers show that environmental laws have not been fulfilled in this area and there is strong human intervention in the PPAs studied.

Highlights

Land use is directly related to water availability
The use of remote sensing and Geographic information systems (GIS) techniques proved to be quite efficient for the analysis of Permanent Preservation Areas (PPAs) occupancy, and the supervised classification performed by the Maximum Likelihood method showed satisfactory accuracy results
The low percentage of areas with remaining natural vegetation (40.19%) and high conflicting land use (58.89%) in the PPAs shows that Law 12,651 is not being fulfilled

Summary

Introduction

Land use is directly related to water availability. it is extremely important to consider the different forms of land use in the management of watersheds, since they favorably or unfavorably affect water quality and availability (Pinto et al, 2005; Moreira et al, 2015).Lotic aquatic systems are those that present moving water, such as rivers, while lentic systems are those characterized by stagnant or slow moving water, such as lakes and lagoons (Brasil, 2005). Land use is directly related to water availability. It is extremely important to consider the different forms of land use in the management of watersheds, since they favorably or unfavorably affect water quality and availability (Pinto et al, 2005; Moreira et al, 2015). River barriers and the formation of reservoirs for hydroelectric use cause significant impacts on watercourses and surrounding areas. As an example, it can be mentioned the transformation from lotic to lentic aquatic systems, which causes negative effects on aquatic ecosystems due to changes in flow hydrodynamics (EPE, 2012). Brazil’s significant hydroelectric potential is related to high water availability and relief characteristics. The impacts generated by these buildings are significant in the regions where they are installed and few areas manage to retain their original characteristics (Messias, 2012)

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