Manual of landscape analysis: Volume 3: Procedures for the generation of spatial indexes of landscape sample units.
Abstract
The National Forest Inventory of Brazil (IFN-BR) aims to inform the formulation and implementation of public policies for the development, use and conservation of forest resources, as well as the management of these resources, through sufficient, reliable and periodically updated information collected in the field. Landscape scale studies, in turn, have also acquired fundamental importance within this context. The National Environmental Policy in Brazil has the objective of preserving, improving and recovering the environmental quality conducive to life, aiming to ensure, in the country, the conditions for socioeconomic development, the interests of national security and the protection of the dignity of the human life. In this way, the overall objective of the National Environmental Policy is divided into preservation, improvement and recovery of the environment. In order to implement actions related to these objectives, diagnostic and analytical tools are required to map and evaluate ecosystems and the respective services they provide in their territories, both spatially explicit. In this evaluation, it is also necessary to translate the results of technical-scientific approaches into information understandable for the implementation of public policies and decision making, which can be done through maps, indicators, reports and graphs. Thus, Embrapa Florestas developed, together with the Brazilian Forest Service (SFB) and with the support of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), a methodology for the spatial analysis of landscape structure in the context of IFN- BR. The objective of the so-called Geospatial Component within the IFN-BR project, over the course of the different editions, is to observe the dynamics of forest use through orbital images, at scales compatible with national and state interests and using indicators such as changes in land use and forest fragmentation. In this way, it intend to produce information on the importance and quality of forest resources in relation to other land uses, in landscape scale, highlighting their functions, quality and incidental pressures, to subsidize the formulation of public policies that are appropriate to the region and its scale of approach. Landscape analysis complements two other components of IFN-BR, field data collection and socioeconomic survey, and is intended to monitor the forest component on a landscape scale over time. In this context are inserted the so-called Landscape Sample Units (UAPs), through which the IFN-BR Geospatial Component is implemented, designed to offer a tool that allows the user to visualize landscape aspects in the form of indicators and their respective indices. Seven categories of landscape quality indicators were established according to the subject or theme of analysis. In this way, the indicators of landscape quality refer to their composition (occupation of land use classes and land cover), morphology (categorization of morphological patterns of forest habitat), mosaic (classification of the neighborhood of use classes and land cover), similarity of adjacent habitats (categorization of the border interface of the natural habitat with other classes of land use and land cover), connectivity (determination of the degree of connection between natural habitat fragments and scenario simulation representing the increase in connectivity based in the restoration of forests), fragmentation (determination of the degree of fragmentation of the natural habitat) and riparian zones (evaluation of the anthropic pressure to which the remnants of forest habitat in the riparian zones are subjected). This manual is attached to the detailed description of the procedures for calculating and analyzing the set of indices that will generate the final diagnosis of the UAPs.