The major bottleneck towards environmental compliance and law enforcement in Brazil is the lack of up-to-date maps accurately depicting the boundaries of protected areas as set by the Forest Code. A detailed study carried out over the Camapuã/Brumado watersheds, based on CONAMA's Act nº 303/2002, was meant to identify and quantify eventual land use legal conflicts. An ETM+/LANDSAT 7 digital image, topographic datasets and the softwares Anudem 5.2, Erdas Imagine 9.2 and ArcGIS 9.3 were used to create visual depictions of both permanent preservation areas (PPA) and land use/land cover. PPAs corresponded to 57,0% of the total area of the watersheds (110.711,9 ha), being 52,6% located on the upper third of hills along the watersheds' divides, 31,4% on riparian zones, 15,6% around springs and their drainage areas and 0,4% combining the areas situated on hillsides with slopes greater than 45° and on the upper third of hills. On one hand, farming activities were identified on 22.000 ha, representing 35% of the protected areas. On the other hand, 31.000 ha, accounting for 65% of the total area that could be legally converted to agricultural lands, were still preserved by native vegetation. These empirical evidences corroborate the hypothesis that the lack of suitable maps showing the limits of protected areas - a responsibility of Brazilian government - forces farmers to operate on the margin of the law, being the primary cause of illegal land use.
Forest legislation; Land use; Brazilian and Forest Code
