Abstract
In recent years, anthropogenic actions have intensified forest fragmentation, causing several damages to the landscape’s natural components, propagating the loss of biodiversity. This study aims to present an analysis of the forest fragments in a conservation unit located at southern of Brazil. The evaluation was carried out for the years 1998, 2008, and 2018, by using landscape metrics and classification of remote sensing imagery of the Landsat satellite. The following metrics were analyzed: area and edge, shape, core area, and aggregation. The results indicated an increase of 16.88% in the total area of vegetation, and the percentage of fragments increased from 16.16% to 18.89%. The number of fragments decreased, resulting in an increase of the mean area in 5.4 ha. The percentage of vegetation under border effect changed from 40.2% to 37.1%. In 1998, the average nearest neighbor distance was 155.4 m, and in 2018, 149.7 m. However, this distance is still classified as a high degree of isolation, which hinders the movement of organisms and the dispersion of species. Thus, all the analyzed metrics indicated a decrease in the fragmentation, except for the edge density metric, in which its increase of 1.86 pointed to a lower degree of conservation during the analyzed period. A study of this nature is important as it provides subsidies for future researches and can contribute to action strategies to be adopted in the management plan of the area.
Highlights
Forest fragmentation process has been intensified in recent years, due to anthropic actions, and it has implied in landscapes with low habitat diversity, in which the fragments are isolated and they have reduced dimensions [1]
Knowledge about forest fragmentation stage based on studies which used landscape ecology metrics allow to diagnose current issues and to point out efficient environmental management policies to control the local conditions [2]
Remote sensing images joined to Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are very important tools to understand the landscape structure, as they allow land use cover mapping, which is essential for impact detection arising from improper handling [3]
Summary
Forest fragmentation process has been intensified in recent years, due to anthropic actions, and it has implied in landscapes with low habitat diversity, in which the fragments are isolated and they have reduced dimensions [1]. The state park Mata dos Godoy is a conservation unit known for being the most important forest remnant of the entire northern region of Paraná, by its extension, and for its state of conservation, as it is considered very important for preservation strategies as cited in [5]. Only this forest is not enough to guarantee the region’s biodiversity. It is necessary to establish a reserve system, based on forest fragments [6]
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