DEFINIÇÃO DE ÁREAS PRIORITÁRIAS PARA A RECUPERAÇÃO FLORESTAL EM BACIAS HIDROGRÁFICAS A PARTIR DE ANÁLISE MULTICRITÉRIO

Abstract

Forest recovery in river basins is essential to increase the production of good quality drinking water. However, this practice requires proper planning that points out priority areas for investing economic and human resources in reforestation. The objective of this study was to identify priority areas for forest recovery in watersheds by means of Multicriteria Analysis in GIS environment. For the case study we adopted the hydrographic basin of the Pirapozinho River, São Paulo. As relevant criteria for determining priority areas, we adopted: drainage network, distance from highways, distance from urban areas, fragments of vegetation, and vulnerability to erosion. The weights of each criterion were obtained from the Hierarchical Analytical Process (AHP). We tested two methods for creating the synthesis map: PLC (Weighted Linear Combination) and Fuzzy Gamma operator. As a result we got two scenarios; the first with the PLC method where we prioritize areas with vegetation fragments and high drainage density, and the second with the Gamma method, which prioritized geotechnically vulnerable areas of the basin. We conclude that the proposed integration model satisfies the identification of areas for forest restoration in watersheds, and that different scenarios can be constructed.