This work was carried ou to indicate the available areas for legal reserve maintenance aiming to provide a basis for discussing the issue of extending legal reserve areas in the Brazilian Amazonia. The methodology employed was divided into two stages: the first involved the delimitation of the original limits of the forest and savanna (cerrado) vegetations, and the identification of the areas where legal reserve must be maintained; the second stage involved the identification of the remaining vegetation cover available for maintaining the legal reserve areas, as well as the disturbed areas through land cover and use mapping using digital image processing and geoprocessing techniques. The study was applied in nine municipalities in Eastern Amazonia (four municipalities in the state of Pará and five in Maranhão). The results obtained using Landsat TM data of 1999 show that all the municipalities studied presented values lower than 80% of the remaining forest. The municipalities in Pará presented remaining forest areas a little over 60%, while in Maranhão municipalities presented values lower than 50%, reaching 6.46% in Itinga do Maranhão.
Legal Reserve; land use and cover; remote sensing; digital image processing; geoprocessing
