<b>Spatialization of the land use in the watershed Ribeirão Descalvado, Botucatu SP, in the period of 35 years</b>

Abstract

The cover vegetation of the soil has undergone constant modifications by humans. In this context, this research was carried out to complete the inventory of land use in the watershed Ribeirão Descalvado, Botucatu, SP, during the period of 35 years in digital satellite image, bands 3, 4 and 5 of the TM sensor of LANDSAT 5, orbit 220, point 76, quadrant A, passing from June 08th 1997 and vertical aerial photographs from 1962, scale 1:25000. The study area lies between the geographical coordinates 22º 50 ‘05 “ to 22º 54’ 26” S latitude and the 48º 22 ‘29 “ to 48º 26’ 36” W longitude Gr., presenting an area of 2.136, 25ha. The land cover presented the following results in 1962: reforestation - 219.13 ha, agricultural use - 17ha, pastures - 916.51 ha, poultry - 841.36 ha, exposed soil - 36.3 ha and forest - 105.95 ha, and in 1997: reforestation - 24.93 ha agricultural use - 993.33 ha, pastures - 530.64 ha; exposed soil - 2.74 ha, poultry - 281.21 ha and forest - 303.4 ha. The results found that there was a significant increase in the areas of agricultural use at the expense of reducing the areas of forestry, pasture and poultry, mainly. The images of  LANDSAT 5 satellite provided an excellent database for the supervised classification, future planning and management of agricultural activities. The Geographical Information System IDRISI was efficient in the discrimination of the use and occupancy of land, showing that the use of tools in geoprocessing facilitates and expedites the linking work of data, allowing the storage of digital data that could be used to further analysis.