Landscape fragmentation analysis of the in the western of São Paulo state, Brazil

Abstract

The concept of landscape structure refers to the study of the landscape from the measurement and quantification of its structural and spatial aspects. The objective of this article is to evaluate the landscape metrics in the extreme western of São Paulo State, Brazil. For this, we used satellite image information and a Geographic Information System to identify the degree of landscape shredding and the isolation. As results, we verified that the area is covered by anthropic uses, which represented 73.92%, and the rest is distributed in natural areas (wetland, island and forest fragments and water corpus). When analyzing the area index, referring to the size of the fragments, we could identify that the highest percentages are concentrated in pasture (42.51%) and agriculture (28.58). The analyzed indexes confirm that the fragmentation of the landscape is expressive and undergoes intense perturbations.

Keywords

• fragmentação da paisagem
• métrica da paisagem
• uso da terra
• sistema de informação geográfica
• oeste paulista