The Suiá-Miçu Basin (BHSM) is an important Xingu River tributary, in the Amazon Basin, comprised of 2.36 millions hectare of ha in the Parecis Plateau, State of Mato Grosso. It encompasses the savannah, the tropical rainforest and the seasonal evergreen forest, whose composition of species reflect the rainfall and the high seasonality. The objective of this work was to characterize the BHSM floodplain areas, and their role for the environmental preservation. The georeferencing of CBERS-2 satellite images (2006) resulted in a RGB234 mosaic with 20 meters of resolution for mapping BHSM drainages. This mosaic allowed to map all drains of the BHSM, therefore, defining the flooded areas, complemented by crossing the hydrography and geomorphological maps as well as the field works. The results point out an area with more than 192,000 hectares, of which approximately 13% were deforested mainly for agricultural uses. The BHSM wetland areas have an important role in supplying water during the dry seasons. They are composed of fluvio-lacustrine habitats and vegetation diversity as native grassland, flooded forests and veredas ( swamp Mauritia flexuosa dominant palms). In Brazil, despite having environmental legislation to fully protect the river and its marginal lands, it is of prime importance to monitor these areas, due to ecosystems fragility found in the BHSM floodplain. Therefore, we recommend more scientifically studies on these ecosystems to carry out decision-making on Brazilian wetland protection areas.
Riparian forest; Wetlands and Suiá-Miçu river
