The occupation and use of different environments by the man are linked to the characteristics of the physical environment, so that the native forest fragments may be restricted to inappropriate areas for use or to areas of difficult access. The hypothesis of this study is that forest fragments are not randomly distributed and may not be representative of the physiographic and soil landscape diversity. Aiming at assessing the environmental representativeness of protected areas in homogeneous stands of eucalyptus, topographic attributes were derived from a Digital Elevation Model (DEM) and soil maps of the study areas were generated. The Chi-Square test returned significant values for all the environmental factors analyzed at 5 % of probability level, implying that the distribution of the native forest and eucalyptus plantation areas is not random, depending on factors such as slope, aspect, landforms and soil groups. Native forests are well-represented in the different slope and aspect classes, but are underrepresented at the hill-tops, where there is the presence of latossolos. On the other hand, there is an overprotection of the terraces and river plains, and of areas of Fluvic Cambisols.
Digital Elevation Model; Native forest fragmentation and Geographic Information Systems
