MAPPING OF RIO PIRAPÓ’S HYDROGRAPHIC BASIN THROUGH GOOGLE EARTH ENGINE - CODE EDITOR

Abstract

Nowadays, the environmental degradation caused by the advances in agriculture and the loss of vegetation is a crescent concern, especially in areas near hydric resources, since vegetation holds an important role in preserving those. Considering their importance, the environmental legislation, in this case the Forest Code - Law no 12.561/2012, assures a minimum range of protection for the water courses, that are the Permanent Preservation Areas - PPA. This works objective consists in the mapping of the Rio Pirapó’s hydrographic basin as well as to analyze the environmental degradation caused by the lack of this element in the landscape. For this, remote sensing techniques were employed through Google Earth Engine - Code Editor, having as a base the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), through the median calculation of the Landsat 5 and 8 satellite images, available in 2005, 2010, 2015 and 2018 without cloud cover. It was possible, through the results, to identify some dynamics regarding the hydrographic basin vegetation, as the fact that the in the year analyzed the biggest vegetation presence could be found in the river source area, possibly thanks to the area slope index that shows a steep relief and the observation of the environmental legislation in the last years.  Lastly, it is important to highlight that Google Earth Engine emerges as a new tool for remote sensing, ensure a greater ease in the image processing for monitoring and environmental analysis.