Detecção de mudança de vegetação de caatinga através de geotecnologias.

Abstract

Desertification has become a serious problem for the semi-arid regions of the planet. In the semi-arid northeast growing environmental degradation has caused desertification processes increasingly significant, bringing consequences as loss of soil fertility and biodiversity. To understand the changes of the complex inter-relationship of the terrestrial environment in response to changing natural and anthropogenic activities, which are dynamic in nature, it is necessary to have a source of data with temporal and spatial flexibility that meets the time frame of this evolution. Through digital processing of satellite images in time series can map and assess the evolution of degradation processes. This study aimed to detect the change in caatinga vegetation in the municipality of Sumé-PB. We used images of medium spatial resolution and by ERDAS and SPRING held mapping using LEGAL. The results showed that there were increases in arboreal the sub arboreal dense class of 10.96%, in sub arboreal dense class 24.52%, shrubby sub arboreal dense class and 13.7%. Detection of change can be seen that there was a recovery of vegetation in 596 km2, not change in an area of 78.1 km2 and degradation in 98.4 km2.