Over the past forty years, Itacolomi State Park (ISP), located in the region of Ouro Preto/Minas Gerais, has been subject to several changes in its patterns of land use and occupation. These changes were recorded and quantified using remote sensing and GIS techniques, which allowed for the construction of four land use maps, representing the changes in the area during the last four decades. In order to evaluate these changes, the following classes of vegetation were defined: Seasonal Semideciduous Forest, Rocky outcrops and Anthropogenic Areas. First, land use maps from 1966 and 1974 were compared, defining the first period of analysis; then, 1974 and 1986 maps were considered in the second period of analysis, and finally the third period of analysis used 1986 and 2000 maps. The changes that occurred in ISP were predominantly of anthropogenic origin, with greater intensity in the seventies. As a result of the abandonment of these activities and also due to greater monitoring and control of human actions performed at ISP during the following decades, the abandoned areas are gradually being occupied by native plants such as "candeia" (Eremanthus sp), rehabilitating the region.
Land use change; geoprocessing; geographic information system; multitemporal analysis; Itacolomi Park; Brazil
