Arquitetura da paisagem: fragmentação, conectividade e integridade de Florestas Urbanas.

Abstract

On an unhealthy planet there will be no healthy economy. The basis of health and human development is the integrity of ecosystems and facing problems resulting from human actions is at the center of strategies for the coming years. Environmental degradation contributes to climate fluctuations, loss of biodiversity and even the emergence of new diseases. Forests can be fruitful in responding to these crises and in the transition to sustainable economies. Cities can lead the way towards meeting the Sustainable Development Goals and other globally established goals by propagating Urban and Peri-Urban Forests. However, the landscape resulting from all human processes is characterized by the fragmentation of natural areas with significant resources. Over the past decade, there has been growing international concern around forest and biodiversity loss, service provision and climate change. Societies are dependent on forests and more than half of the world's Gross Domestic Product depends on ecosystem services. Increasing or restoring the connectivity and functionality of urban natural landscapes can be a valuable contribution to the conservation of natural resources. Connected networks represent the best opportunity to maintain and restore ecological and evolutionary processes, and protect ecosystems vital to humanity and life. Architecture is becoming an opportunity to transform cities and urban landscapes into “urban ecosystems” that, among other things, contribute to mitigating and adapting to climate change. Biodiversity conservation is on several management agendas and, like all sustainability issues, requires an integrated multidisciplinary and multi-scale approach, considering everything from the individual tree to the entire city's forest, also addressing structural, functional, ecological, landscape, social and cultural aspects to ensure multifunctionality. In this sense, this work investigated recent terminologies of fragmentation connectivity, to map definitions of different spatial-functional relationships. The classes defined based on the selected portfolio were evaluated in a study applied to the Cerrado biome, to identify relationships between patterns and ecological processes of natural fragments in the urban environment at different scales, not yet established in Landscape Architecture in Brazil. The results are a collaborative and effective multidisciplinary auxiliary tool for future proposals and research linked to the establishment of ecologically balanced systems in environmental sciences.