Assessment of Conformity to Areas under Permanent Preservation and Restricted Use within River Espinharas Hydrographic Sub-Basin

Abstract

The changes made in the natural dynamics cause risks that influence the equilibrium, terrestrial and atmospheric. The aim of the study was to characterize the land cover and land use of the Espinharas river sub-basin, with emphasis on the Permanent Preservation Areas (APP) and Areas of Restricted Use (ARU). The Sub-basin of rio Espinharas is part of the Northern Country Depression, it has one of the most typical landscapes of the northeastern semi-arid region. For the analyzes, multispectral images of the Landsat 8 OLI satellites were used, from the orbits and points 215/65, 216/64, bands 3, 4 and 5. The delineation of the sub-basin began with obtaining the hydrological attributes in the Software QGIS. For the identification of the areas of land use conflicts in APP and ARU, the map algebra was used to perform an overlay of the land cover and use map with the Map of the APP and ARU, using SIG Idrisi Software. The classes of land use and land cover in the SBH of the Espinharas River has the predominance of the Open Arboreal Shrub Caatinga (OASC) typologies with 2,239.37 km² (68.13%), Closed Arboreal Shrub Caatinga (CASC) with 203.17 km² (6.18%) of the total SBH area. It was also verified that 752.67 km² (22.90%) of the total area corresponds to anthropism. The satellite images allowed to have a clear, comprehensive and current view of the use and land cover of SBH of the river Espinharas. Discrimination, mapping and quantification of land use and land cover areas through the Geographical Information System (IDRISI, QGIS GRASS) classification allowed us to obtain results with greater agility regarding the integration and manipulation of the areas. The data obtained will help recovery plans and planning of the area, since a part of SBH is not complying with the current environmental legislation.