João dos Santos Vila da Silva

Terrestrial and Aquatic Vegetation Diversity of the Pantanal Wetland

This chapter is a comprehensive summary and an illustrated report of our observations over 30 years of research on flora, vegetation, and geoprocessing based on intensive fieldwork throughout the Pantanal plain and highlands, associated to data compiled from the literature. There is a unique phytogeographic diversity in the Pantanal, a region of confluence of various biogeographic provinces, such as Cerrado, Amazon, Atlantic Forest, and Chaco, plus a wide distribution group and the exotic plants. The proportions of the flora are approximately 50% wide-ranging species, 30% Cerrado species, and 20% shared among other phytogeographic origins. Considering the 350 woody plants, the Cerrado group is the most numerous (66 species), followed by Cerrado and seasonal forest (47), wide distribution (31), Chaco (29), and seasonal forest (23). There is little endemism, probably due to the recent geological age of the Pantanal. So far, the Pantanal is yet the most conserved biome in Brazil. The vegetation is very resilient, flexible, and adapted to wet-and-dry seasonal and decadal cycles, including fire, and shall remain diverse as long as the hydrological balance is not disrupted by homogenization toward either an entirely dry or a fully wet system.

Modis time series to assess pasture land

Land use conversion is a key factor in the mitigation of GHG emission. Maximum mitigation can be achieved when degraded pasture land is converted to biofuel crops. Remote sensing images, and in particular the MODIS time series data, have a great potential to asses degraded pasture land. This work has the objective to identify pasture land and its different levels of degradation in Mato Grosso do Sul state, Brazil. MODIS time series were used to obtain vegetation indices and fraction images. The wavelet technique was applied at various levels of decomposition to extract the input parameters in the WEKA J48 classifier. Pasture land was well distinguished from Cerrado. The distinction among different pasture land presented lower performance with best results for pasture with invasive plants followed by good pasture. Pasture land with bare soil patches and termite mounds were not distinguished from other classes of pasture.

ENVIRONMENTAL PASSIVE TRANSGRESSION ANALYSIS IN PERMANENT PRESERVATION AREAS AND LEGAL RESERVE IN THE QUEIMA-PÉ/MT RIVER BASIN

This paper presents an environmental transgression analysis based on the 1965 Forest Code and its amendments in Permanent Preservation areas and Legal Forest reserves in the Queima-Pe river basin. We used images from GeoEye with 3m of spatial resolution to identify anthropogenic and natural vegetation areas and to determine the Permanent Preservation areas, supported by a geographic information system. The buffers for the Permanent Preservation areas were automatically generated in a geographic information system considering the sources, drainage network, and artificial reservoirs and then were compared with a map of human activities and natural vegetation. The results demonstrated that in the region of phytoecological forest, the vegetation comprised 7.18% of the Legal Forest reserves and the Savanna (Cerrado) and natural vegetation comprised 7.82% of the Legal Forest reserves. Approximately 64.10% of the permanent preservation areas were occupied by riparian vegetation. Generally, the basin presents an environmental passive of 8009.81 hectares.

PERFIL DOS AGRICULTORES FAMILIARES EXTRATIVISTAS DA REGIÃO SUDOESTE MATOGROSSENSE, PERTENCENTE À BACIA DO ALTO PARAGUAI - BRASIL

The family agriculture is important for the brazilian agriculture, because it provides a significant part of food to the brazilians. This composition aims at tracing the profile of family farmers who develop extractivist activity in the southwest area of Mato Grosso, contained in the basin of Alto Paraguai, in the perspective of contributing to the elaboration of productive strategies for the smallholdings and small properties of the area. Thirty extractivist female farmers were identified, distributed in the settlements: a) Bom Jardim/Furna Sao Jose, b) Corixo and c) Margarida Alves, what guided the definition of the universe of research to correspond to 100%. Within the period of March and June of 2012 information were collected through interviews driven by semi structured routs. It was found that 30% of