O emprego da reserva legal no município de Irauçuba/Ce

Abstract

The environmental degradation in the municipality of Irauçuba is the target of several studies, because it is an issue where the causes are present in much of the northeastern semiarid. However, when dealing with this subject, soon comes to attention another issue which is more serious and that arises from the ongoing degradation: the process of desertification. The present paper analyzes briefly the cearense semiarid, giving special emphasis to that municipality, so that the origin of the degradation, the current local situation and even possible ways to minimize or even stagnate that environmental problem were all the target of this research. The overall goal was to enumerate the number of farms, among them those that either have a specially protected area called legal reserve, or those that does not. The choice of this statistic as an indicator was due to the fact that it is a legal instrument, which in turns compels all and any owner of land or rural possessor to maintain 20% of their property preserved as a Legal Reserve area. Its effectiveness as a tool for preservation was analyzed in 6 properties with the help of satellite images from LANDSAT 5, taken between the years 1993 and 2007 and, by examining the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), a comparative study was conducted to determine whether there was a growth or not of the vegetative area inside and outside the legal reserves. During the identification of the properties to be studied, only six were found to have a legal reserve officially implemented by the year 2007, the most recent date of the satellite images used. A comparative analysis with those lands that have some kind of record in the Registry of Property and/or INCRA, among the 713 measured and georeferenced by IDACE and that, in turn, used the NDVI as a guideline, indicated no significant difference on the index either inside or outside the Legal Reserves areas.