TEMPORAL ANALYSIS OF LAND USE AND LAND COVER THROUGH MODELED SURFACE OBSERVATIONS IN APA PETROPOLIS, RIO DE JANEIRO

Abstract

Human action has been changing the landscape and leaving their mark in the form of different land cover and land uses. This paper seeks to show that diversity, based on the study of horizontal landscape structure, supported by geoecology analyzes supported in geoprocessing products, such as Digital Elevation Models (DEMs). The main purpose was to perform a temporal comparison (between 1994 and 2007) analyzes of land use in planimetric and modeled surface observations. The study area chosen was the APA Petrópolis, RJ, that is a conservation unit of sustainable use, located in rugged relief, that favored the comparison between the surfaces. The results showed that the APA is presenting forest loss with the increase of human interventions, and these differences are bigger when evaluated in modeled surface. In assessing the rate of forest retraction in the 13 years of analysis, the difference between modeled and planimetric surface observations reached 0.31 km2/year, featuring a significant increase in the retraction value calculation when evaluated on modeled surface.