Mudanças de uso e cobertura da terra e vulnerabilidade ambiental da bacia hidrográfica do Rio Arauaí, Moju/PA.

Abstract

The investments that Pará started to receive from the launch of the Agroecological Zoning of Palm Oil and the Program for Sustainable Production of Palm Oil (PPSOP), in 2010, made possible the expressive expansion of the palm culture in the northeast of Pará, where it found conditions ideal climate for this. Since then, national and international companies have been installed along the highways of Pará aiming at agricultural exploitation. In this context, the Arauaí River Basin (BHRA) is inserted, in the municipality of Moju/Pará, Eastern Amazon. In view of the panorama, the present research seeks to quantify and map the spatial distribution of the levels of environmental vulnerability of the BHRA caused by human activities and natural aspects, having as main aid the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) statistical methodology developed by Saaty (1980) and geoprocessing, in addition, the change in land use and cover is sought, having as a time frame the Program for Sustainable Production of Palm Oil (PPSOP) with the help of Geographic Information System (GIS) and Remote Sensing. Based on the results, it was possible to define areas with 5 different degrees of environmental vulnerability - Very Low, Low, Moderate, High and Very High, in addition to verifying that the amount of area converted to oil palm was basically the same in the pre-PPSOP and post-PPSOP period, with the change being due to the amount of area converted from primary forest to oil palm, which decreased in the post-PPSOP period.