PARENT SESSION
Poster Session 13: Landscape Ecology / Geomorphology
Tuesday, August 9, 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM, Exhibit Hall 220 A-E, Level 2, Palais des congrès de Montréal
Quantitative analysis on spatial pattern in Teresopolis, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil.
Calçada, Tatiana, Silva, Viviane, Ferreira, Antonia Maria,
ABSTRACT- Presently the environmental changes such as the reduction of forested areas and freshwater availibity and production, biodiversity lost, atmospheric chemical composition changes, global heating and diminishing quality of life issues occur in large spacial scales of landscapes. In order to understand these changes studies dedicated to spatial pattern or landscape structure have been increasingly applied. The goal of this study was to quantify the spacial pattern changes of the Paquequer river watershed, located in the town of Teresopolis, in the years 1956, 1976 and 1996 through landscape metrics. The analyses were carried out from the vegetation cover maps of Teresopolis project data base, on Arcview 3.2 software, by the Patch Analyst extension. The landscape metrics were analysed both at landscape and class levels. The results show an evolution for all vegetation cover classes (inicial,intermediate and advanced stages and climax stage), and either to land use class. In the period studied we can verify an increase in advanced and climax stages and Uso areas, this last one mainly in the urban area, because of Teresopolis economic profile changes. Therefore the landscape becomes more heterogeneous, with a finer grain and with smaller and more regular patches. The major patch, ocurring in 1956, belonged to inicial stage and ocuppied 26% of landscape, turned into USO, with a representation of 13% in 1996. The total core area has reduced a lot, influenced mostly by the loss of inicial stage core area extension . The complexity of this landscape is more represented in larger patches than in the mean size, although smaller than those from 1956. The results of this study will provide a contribution to Landscape Ecology.
Key words: spatial pattern, temporal analysis, gis