@InProceedings{Valeriano:2002:AsLaCo,
               author = "Valeriano, Dalton",
                title = "Assessment of land cover legal status in Brazilian Atlantic Forest 
                         by remote sensing and geographic information analysis techniques",
                 year = "2002",
         organization = "International Symposium on Remote Sensing of Environment (ISRSE), 
                         29.",
             keywords = "Atlantic Forest.",
             abstract = "The historical occupation of the Brazilian Eastern coast and 
                         Southern and Southeastern Regions resulted in an intense 
                         deforestation of the Atlantic Forest which is presently reduced to 
                         less than 8 percent of its original cover of 1.3 million km2. The 
                         remaining forest cover comprises mostly of sparsely distributed 
                         small patches and larger forest remnants on steep slopes of 
                         mountain chains. The Atlantic Forest biodiversity is considered 
                         one of the largest of the world and the urgent need for action to 
                         protect it is expressed in its inclusion in the list of World 
                         Biodiversity Hotspots. Since 1965 Brazil has a specific 
                         legislation for the protection of the vegetation cover, the Forest 
                         Protection Act (FPA), which has the objective of controlling and 
                         mitigating environmental damages caused by deforestation. The FPA 
                         determines permanent preservation of forest cover of specific 
                         areas such as river margins and steep slopes taking into account 
                         the role of the vegetation cover in the protection of soils and 
                         water resources. It also prescribes a minimal proportion of forest 
                         cover that must be preserved at within each property. However the 
                         law is rarely enforced due to surveillance costs and the lack of 
                         operational technology available for the institutions responsible 
                         for FPA observance. This work demonstrates the applicability of 
                         remote sensing and geographical information analysis techniques 
                         for the detection of areas in disagreement with some of the 
                         criteria for the determination of permanent preservation areas 
                         stated by the Forest Protection Act. The methodology is applicable 
                         to any medium to high resolution multispectral optical data and it 
                         is here demonstrated with Landsat data. Digitized contour lines 
                         and drainage network from topographic maps are used in the 
                         determination of permanent preservation areas. Georreferencing, 
                         corrections for atmospheric path radiance and band ratioing are 
                         applied to the remote sensing data in order to produce an image 
                         with reduced effect of the topography on the illumination 
                         condition. Image segmentation into homogeneous fields followed by 
                         field based unsupervised classification stratifies the image into 
                         spectral classes which are mapped into two classes, Forest and 
                         Non-Forest that comprise the Forest Cover Map. A grid describing 
                         the distance to the drainage network is constructed for the whole 
                         area and sliced into the appropriate distance to map permanent 
                         preservation areas along river channels. Contour lines are 
                         converted into a digital elevation model from which a terrain 
                         slope grid is derived and sliced into slope thresholds above which 
                         forest preservation is determined. Boolean union operation among 
                         the last two thematic maps produces the Permanent Preservation 
                         Areas Map. An interception operation of the Permanent Preservation 
                         Areas Map with the Forest Cover Map detects areas that are in 
                         agreement and in disagreement. to the FPA. All procedures are 
                         conducted with the image processing and geographical information 
                         analysis system SPRING, a freeware developed by the Brazilian 
                         Space Research Institute. Applications of the methodology to test 
                         areas show that the compliance to the FPA would greatly improve 
                         landscape quality for biodiversity conservation by enlarging 
                         existing forest patches.",
  conference-location = "Buenos Aires, AR",
      conference-year = "8-12 Apr. 2002",
           copyholder = "SID/SCD",
                label = "10386",
           targetfile = "INPE 9452.pdf",
        urlaccessdate = "17 maio 2024"
}