Land use planning and conservation of mammals in São Paulo State/Brazil

Abstract

The biodiversity is threatened mainly by the loss and fragmentation of habitats and it is affected directly by the changes in land use. Considering the need of large areas for maintenance great mammal's survival and the difficulty to restricted areas to the human use, this study aims to establish strategies to integrate the land use planning and the conservation of the species Chrysocyon brachyurus, Puma concolor and Leopardus Pardalis. Information (maps) related to Sao Paulo state (regional scale) land use will be collected and processed in Geographical Information Systems (GIS). Images of the satellites Landsat and CBERS will be acquired and processed in GIS for elaboration the land use map of the municipal district of Brotas (local scale). Field job for georeferencing and consultation to the Environmental Zoning also will be used for that. The occurrence of big mammals will be analyzed and specialized by the acquirement of biological (presence data or absence of the species) and environmental data and by the ecological modeling of these data. The models will return some correlations of the species and the land use patterns in two different scales: local and regional. After that, the applicability of the different scales used will be compared. Finally, aspects related to conservation of great mammals and land use patterns will base the elaboration of local scenarios. The results will indicate priorities for allocation of protected areas and strategies for management in agricultural areas. As well the results should subsidize the elaboration of Environmental Zonings and others environments planning tools.