Vulnerabilidade ambiental no entorno do monumento natural do Itabira, ES, Brasil

Abstract

The institution of biological value areas through the creation of Natural Protected Areas is an important tool for protecting the country's environmental resources, to face advanced anthropic development on natural areas, either to increase agriculture production or for economic growth. Currently laws that regulates environmental issues are still outdated and inconsistente. Since SNUC edition in 2000 many parts of its scope have not been regulated. Environmental vulnerability studies combined with geotechnological tools has been an important device to identify the most vulnerable areas and consequently helps UC's protection. The objective of this study was analyze environmental vulnerability at buffer zone of Monumento Natural do Itabira (MONAI) in Cachoeiro de Itapemirim, Brazil, and evaluate environmental licensing procedure. Necessary methodological steps for this study were as follows: a) photointerpretation of land use occupancy; b) anthropic variables selection; c) application of euclidean distance function in variables vector images; d) application of fuzzy membership function in variables raster images; e) application of Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) by Saaty (1977); f) spatial classification of environmental vulnerability around MONAI; and g) documental analysis of databases at local government. Conflicts of land use occupation reveals a relevant presence of pasture areas, representing 49.80% of the entire buffer zone. This fact corroborates with its euclidean distance value that showed the lowest linear value, 836 meters. Eight anthropic variables have been incorporated, highlighting agriculture production, urban areas, exposed soil and pasture, respectively. Five vulnerability classes were defined by Jenks natural breaks. According to results, 57.14% of entire MONAI buffer zone is represented by the high and very high classes. Spatial analysis of companies was compare with environmental vulnerability map, showing that 84.77% of all companies are in high class of vulnerability. The outdated law creation of MONAI and the lack of a management plan results in a buffer zone so vulnerable. The present study can support management plan formulation and assist MONAI’s buffer zone delimitation.