Preparation of environmental statement of fitness for a small rural property in the municipality of São Miguel Arcanjo, São Paulo, Brazil, using geoprocessing techniques

ABSTRACT

According geoprocessing techniques, slope maps, soil, land use and land cover, the Federal Law number 12.651/2012 and the recommendations of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) for riparian areas, this study aimed to develop a Map of Environmental Suitability that indicates levels of environmental and lawful adequacy of the study area. The Map of Land Use and Vegetation Cover showed that agricultural uses occupy 44% of the study area, followed by native vegetation (29.1%). Meanwhile, the Map of Slope reveals that 64.8% of the study area has slope class between 6 and 12%, and 22.6% between 12 and 20%. In the study area, only Dystrophic Red Oxisols was identified, with very low vulnerability to erosion. Based on the abovementioned law and recommendations of the FSC (2005) for management of riparian areas, the Map of Restricted Uses was produced, in which 22.4% of the area is composed of permanent preservation areas (APP), 0.3% of APP to recompose, 18.3% of legal reserve (LR) and 9.9% of riparian management areas. The three last thematic maps were overlaid, considering the importance in the conservation of water resources and the legal attendance to generate the Conservationist Use Map, which shows that the areas with high and very high vulnerability are the APP; those with slope between 12 and 20% represent 45.5% of the study area. This map was overlaid by the Land Use and Land Cover maps, and an Environmental Adaptation Map was produced using a weighted sum, indicating adequacy levels of the study area. The integration of environmental variables with legal requirements proved to be effective to assess potential areas for environmental compliance, indicating that approximately 44% of the study area needs some sort of adjustment.

Keywords:
environmental fragility; handling properties; environmental legislation.