Mapeamento do uso e ocupação do solo da área suscetível à desertificação do Médio Jaguaribe: identificação do potencial de serviços ecossistêmicos

Abstract

The desertification problem has advanced along the years as a result of several factors and actions, natural or anthropic, that impact the environment. In Brazil, there is an extensive area in desertification process, that covers part of the Northeast and a small region of the Southeast, in which Ceará is one of the Northeastern states affected by this phenomenon, in it we find three nuclei with an Area Susceptible to Desertification, among them is the Nucleus III of Médio Jaguaribe, a very anthropized area that suffers pressure in its use and occupation of the soil, as well as the impacts due to the hot climate of semi-arid region. The present work aims to map this area in its use and occupation, making a temporal analysis showing the potential of ecosystem services within a period of 5 years. For this, we developed a matrix of values assigning a weight between 0 and 5, from no potential relevance to maximum potential relevance, for each class of land use and occupation. We worked on 3 types of ES, Support, Regulation and Provision, using the methodology of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA, 2005), with the exception of the culture service; and 6 classes of land use: Forest Formation, Non-forested Natural Formation, Agriculture, Non-vegetated Area, Urbanized Area and Water Body, for the crossing of data. Given the importance of ES for environmental balance and social well-being, ecosystems differ in their potential to provide goods and services. The mapping of SE shows itself as an important tool that enables the spatialization of SEs and assists in decision making and spatial management. The data collected from the MapBiomas site were processed and reclassified by the Qgis program, resulting in the construction of 30 SE maps. From the information obtained, it was possible to see that the land use class "Forest" showed higher results for all types of ES. Moreover, one of the classes that showed less importance was the Urbanized Area and Non Vegetated Area, with average values lower than the others. The spatialization of the data represented the supply of ES for each use and occupation class, showing how the classes differ in potential and ability to provide ES.