Redefinition of special protection areas in a GIS environment: the case of the municipality of Santa Maria, Brazil

Abstract

The elements that compose landscapes provide environmental services to society, in such a way that research based on multiple criteria evaluation can constitute valuable strategies for defining areas of environmental protection. In the municipality of Santa Maria, State of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, there are local special protection areas being created based on cartographic documents, which sometimes are incompatible with the local environmental scope. This work aims to redefine these special protection areas by considering the elements of the landscapes that have applications in the multicriteria approach in a Geographic Information System environment. The methodology focuses on the components of the landscape: vegetation, geology-geomorphology, and hydrography. The result of the research was the creation of a map with the redefinition of specially protected areas, generated through the criteria: Land Use and Coverage; Drainage distance; Water supply; Geotouristic sites, and fossiliferous sites and; Special Natural Areas. Such mappings were weighted on the same scale and same classification of weights, according to the order of importance, thus allowing the reordering of the territorial limits of specially protected areas in a way more consistent with the local reality.