Analysis of the conflict of use and coverage of the land of the municipality of Areia – PB in relation to forest legislation

ABSTRACT

The overexploitation of natural resources will drastically affect the quality of life in the coming decades. In Brazil, evidence reveals that many anthropic actions, besides exploiting natural resources in a disorderly manner, are at odds with the legislation with regard to Permanent Preservation Areas (PPAs). Thus, the objective of this work was to delimit the PPAs and to produce a land use and land cover map of Areia municipality, Paraíba state, in order to investigate the existence of use conflicts in these preservation areas. The mapping of land use and land cover was carried out by interpreting an image from the PlanetScope satellite, with a spatial resolution of 3.125 m. Its accuracy was measured by identifying a set of sample locations and applying the Kappa and Tau indices. The PPAs areas around springs and the drainage network were delimited. The results obtained using the Kappa and Tau indices were 0.79 and 0.82, respectively. The main class of land use and land cover diagnosed in the municipality was pasture, with 59.5%. From field observation, this extensive pasture area is largely degraded, underutilized or in a state of neglect. The proportion of land use and land cover classes in Areia mirrors what occurs in many other places in Brazil. It is suggested, therefore, to incorporate these underutilized areas into the demand for expansion of agricultural production frontiers, without the need to modify preserved areas. It was also observed that around 70% of the delimited PPA have inadequate use or coverage, taking into account the restrictions of use to which they are subject by environmental legislation. Finally, it is recommended that public managers search for the environmental adequacy of PPAs through the creation of public policies that promote the maintenance of water resources and the environmental adequacy of rural properties of the municipality through payment for environmental services or other incentive and awareness instruments.

Keywords
Land use and land cover; PPA; Environmental planning; Kappa and Tau indices