Atlantic Forest scenarios under the parameters of forestry laws

ABSTRACT Remote sensing allows for identification of regularities and irregularities in land use and land coverage (LULC) change in relation to environmental legislation. The aim of this study was to delimit scenarios in the permanent preservation areas (PPAs) according to the Brazilian forestry law, with or without consolidated uses in the basin of Capivari River and the State of Rio de Janeiro in the Atlantic Forest biome. Mapping and analysis were performed on LULC in areas of permanent preservation using the following data: RapidEye-REIS satellite scenes acquired in 2012 and Bhattacharyya distance classifier and hydrography of the basin and digital elevation model (1:25.000) using Spring and ArcGIS software. The legal scenarios adopted were as follows: I) Federal Law N°. 4,771/1965 and the National Council for the Environment (CONAMA) N°. 303/2002; II) Federal Law N°. 12,651/2012; and III) Federal Law N°. 12,651/2012 and N°. 12,727/2012. The classification presented an excellent overall accuracy of 91.15% and a Kappa Index of 0.86 in relation to the samples of the six multipurpose classes having the anthropic uses of agriculture, burned pasture, exposed soil and urbanization, which were present with conflicting uses for Scenarios I, II and III. The new forest legislation for the PPAs of Scenario III impacted the reduction of 68% compared to Scenario I, which corroborates with the concerns on the conservation of water and soil resources