Instrumentos de avaliação de eficiência das unidades de conservação

Abstract

LIMA, M. L. (2022). Instruments for Evaluation of Efficiency of Protected Areas. 2022. 34. Dissertation - Graduate Program in Natural Resources. Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil.

The Conservation Units (UCs) are natural areas with defined limits instituted by the government aiming at the protection of biological diversity in harmony with human activities in the long term (IBAMA, 2007). After the creation of a Conservation Unit is necessary management and verification of its efficiency, using tools that demonstrate the conservation of the protected area and its surroundings (NOLTE, C.; AGRAWAL, A., 2013). The objective of this work was to assess the state of the literature on tools that estimate the efficiency of protected areas and the application of tools that allow the analysis of vegetation cover before and after the implementation of a Conservation Unit. To this end, a bibliometric analysis was carried out, by searching the titles and abstracts of the databases Scopus and Web of Science, considering their relevance and the free availability of the papers. The search resulted in 267 publications between the years 1998 and 2020 and an average annual growth of 31.68%. The country with the largest number of authors addressed was the United States. Brazil is among the 10 countries with the largest number of papers in the database. The most studied types of protected areas were Marine Protected Areas and National Park. There were connections among four authors with the largest number of publications. The most prominent keywords were biodiversity, protected areas and environmental protection. With regard to the use of instruments to evaluate effectiveness, the use of interview methods with managers, remote sensing techniques and evaluation by means of the preservation of fauna and flora species were observed. Few works were identified that refer to the conservation of freshwater systems. To evaluate the efficiency of the Rio Formoso Natural Monument Conservation Unit, a multitemporal land cover analysis was carried out before and after the creation of the Natural Monument, using image processing from Landsat 5 satellites in 1984 and 2003 and Landsat 8 satellites in 2020 and 2021. The analysis was carried out in and around the Conservation Unit, establishing a buffer radius equivalent to 10 km. For the vegetation mapping of the region, the classification of 5 types of soil cover was defined: water, exposed soil, ground vegetation, shrub vegetation and tree vegetation. Initially, NDVI slicing procedure was used with the help of QGIS 3.18. However, due to a value conflict between tree and undergrowth vegetation, it was not possible to quantify both classes. However, the multitemporal analysis with mapping of the vegetation cover was performed through the supervised classification method, using the Spring 5.5.6 software. Furthermore, the images were post-processed with the help of QGIS 3.18.1, to correct areas where the initial processing was not able to identify. Among the results, it was found that there was an expressive growth of arboreal vegetation and the absence of exposed soil within the natural monument, with a significant reduction of exposed soil around the conservation unit, characterizing the conservation of the protection area. The methodology of multitemporal analysis carried out remotely and through information and software purchased for free on the internet, provides greater monitoring and supervision of the region, constituting a cost-effective tool.