Abstract

ABSTRACT Permanent Preservation Areas (PPAs) along watercourses have been the focus of numerous studies, not only because of the fragility and ecological relevance of riverine vegetation, but also because of the inefficiency demonstrated in conforming to the legislation protecting it. One of the major difficulties encountered in terms of guaranteeing the effective conservation of these riverside areas is the absence of methodologies that can be used to define them rapidly and accurately without manually determining the widths of the rivers or assigning only uniform linear values for the entire watercourse. The present work sought to develop a spatial analysis methodology capable of automatically defining permanent preservation areas along watercourses using geographic information system (GIS) software. The present study was undertaken in the Sergipe River basin, "considering the river itself and its principal affluents. We used the database of the Digital Atlas of Hydrological Resources (SEMARH/SE), and the delimitations of the PPAs were performed using ArcGIS 10.1 and the XToolPro 9.0 extension. A total of 5,003.82 hectares of Permanent Preservation Areas were delimited along the margins of the rivers analyzed, with a margin of error of <1% in delimiting the widths of the rivers within the entire area considered. The methodology described here can be used to define PPAs efficiently, relatively rapidly, and with very small margins of error, thus representing a technological advance in terms of using GIS for land management.

Highlights

  • The establishment of protected natural areas has been the focus of governments and civil organizations throughout the world

  • Permanent Preservation Areas (PPAs) along watercourses have been the focus of numerous studies, because of the fragility and ecological relevance of riverine vegetation, and because of the inefficiency demonstrated in conforming to the legislation protecting it

  • One of the major difficulties encountered in terms of guaranteeing the effective conservation of these riverside areas is the absence of methodologies that can be used to define them rapidly and accurately without manually determining the widths of the rivers or assigning only uniform linear values for the entire watercourse

Read more

Summary

Introduction

The establishment of protected natural areas has been the focus of governments and civil organizations throughout the world. Brazilian environmental legislation has established numerous mechanisms for protecting the environment through the creation of legally protected areas These protected areas can be territorial sites defined and delimited by the government for specific purposes, including Conservation Units (CU) (BRASIL, 2000), Legal Reserves (LR), and Permanent Preservation Areas (PPAs) (BRASIL, 2012). Among these different categories, PPAs have gained special attention in terms of land management as they do not depend on additional administrative acts to be established (such as official government decrees in the case of CUs), or official registration (as in the case of LRs), but have well-defined and fundamental objectives, including the preservation of natural resources, environmental quality, and biodiversity, as well as guaranteeing the well-being of human populations (BRASIL, 2012). In spite of the obvious relevance of mapping these areas this step is rarely officially undertaken for number of reasons, including the lack of interest of the central government in including these areas in strategic plans (RIBEIRO et al, 2005), making this theme much more present in the academic literature than in administrative thinking (NOWATZKI et al, 2010; GONÇALVES et al, 2012; LEAL et al, 2013; CARDOSO; AQUINO, 2013)

Methods
Results
Discussion
Conclusion
Full Text
Paper version not known

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call

Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.