High Paraguay Hydrographic Basin Conservation Plan

The High Paraguay Basin Conservation Plan - PCBAP - involves the Brazilian States of Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul. The plan belongs to the Pantanal component of the Environment National Program and has been created by the Secretary of Environmental Issues of the Ministry of Environment, Hydro Resources and Legal Amazon, together with Universities and State and Federal agencies. The plan is an United Nations' program for sustainable development and has been financed by the Interamerican Development Bank.
The Federal University of Paraná's Integrated Center for GIS Studies has created the PCBAP GIS, in which the spatial analysis for the definition of the natural environmental units, environmental derivation fragility and socio-economic environmental units has been processed in order to propose the Environmental Zoning and Activities Policies. This report presents the PCBAP Geographic Information System.

INTRODUCTION

Fig. 1 - Vegetation

PROJECT DEVELOPMENT

Fig. 2 - Pedology

The importance of the PCBAP's SIG lays, mainly, on its abrangency (34 maps on 1:250,000 scale - approximately 380,000 sq.Km or 149,000 sq.mi) and diversity of sources and formats. It shows that the integrated governmental action is feasible to achieve the desired objectives, if there is an effective coordination.

The following issues, with the respective sources and formats, were handled:

Therefore, the data is originated from seven different sources and formats. Such circumstance did not become a problem to the work development in ARCINFO NT and ARCVIEW 3.0 environments. The conversions were made with no loss of information. Furthermore, it is important to notice that four universities were involved, including UFPR, to whom ICGS belongs.

The SIG's functioning tests were made through the development of three aplications:

1. Identification of the Natural Environmental Units

According to professor Jurandyr Ross, "the identification of the Natural Environmental Units aim to provide integrated technical and scientific information of the nature components, handled in a synthetic form and represented as homogeneous spots." The thematic maps used were:

- Geomorphology ;
- Geology ;
- Pedology .

Fig. 3 - Geomorphology

"The Natural Environmental Units were conceived from the structure in taxonomic levels, resultant from the matching of the geomorphology, geology, and pedology issues' cartographic products. The information on vegetation issue was added, however, without units definition.

The first level - taxon - was obtained from the geomorphological map, through the identification of the areas that can and areas that cannot be flooded; the second level - morphostructural - was extracted from the geological map and facilitated the information's obtention when it was incorporated in the geomorphology map with a simplified manner; the third taxon was also extracted from the geomorphological map, and the fourth from the pedological map."2

2. Identification of the Fragility Areas

The thematic maps used were:

- Potential erosion of the soil map;
- Geomorphology map.

The potential erosion of the soil map was used as the basis to the generation of the High Paraná Basin's fragility map.

This image, on raster format, suffered vectorization processes where its classes' internal boards were dissolved, transformed in several polygons representing the several soil potential erosion classes of the High Paraná Basin.

The soil potential erosion has the following classification:

Since the numeric model considers only the laminar hydro erosion (potential erosion) of the basin, handling and soil coverage indexes were combined to it, representing the degree of coverage according to the offered protection. These indexes were applied with a value hierarchy (from 0 to 1), where 0 (zero) is a minimum protection and 1 (one) maximum protection. On this way, the final model will represent the real erosion of the area.

Considering that the Pantanal region has low altimetric variation, the methodology used by the IHP on the model's construction has defined it as a large region represented below the 200m quota.

As professor Jurandyr Ross' suggestion, the different fragility classes founded on this region were estimated in function of their flood degree.

Therefore, the regions where the numeric model is below the 200m quota were interrelated with the accumulation forms and classified on the geomorphology map, according to the type and permanence time of the flood.

The accumulation forms were classified as following:

3. Identification of the Soil Use Potentiality Area

Thematic maps used:

- Soil use;
- Geomorphology ;
- Vegetation ;
- Pedology ;
- Geology.

The natural resources use potentiality letter aims to orient the land's use in a rational form.

The classification of the potential uses was elaborated by professor Jurandyr Ross as follows:

- Extensive cattle-raising;
- Extensive cattle-raising - meat and milk;
- Agriculture - mechanized monoculture;
- Polyculture - small/medium proprieties;
- Forestry - rubber trees wood;
- Mineral exploitation - gold;
- Mineral exploitation - diamond;
- Mineral exploitation - limestone;
- Mineral exploitation - iron;
- Wild animals raising;
- Tourism - natural reserves;
- Permanent preservation areas.

The used methodology considered, for each use potentiality, the above mentioned themes' pertinent factors.

CONCLUSION

The PCBAP, by its territorial importance and environmental diversity, should be an example for the environmental government actions. The always present concern in its development was the technological resources aggregation through GIS as an environment for information treatment and handling. This consciousness should be present in congeneric actions, mainly in those that handle simulations, such as the environmental impact analysis, since it is not possible to handle such quantity of information with the analogic form and conventional methods without loss of quality in the results.

It is fundamental to our country, which holds so rich environment, the rapid appropriation of GIS technology.

The ICGS, with the experience acquired from the PCBAP, has in the present conditions of assisting in the creation of environmental GIS with competence.

We take the opportunity of the the Esri Conference 1997 to present this summarized report because we believe that the PCBAP, structured as a GIS, is one of the largest planning and environmental management acquisition in Brazil.

REFERENCES

1. Ministry of Environment, Hydro Resources and Free Amazon - High Paraguay Basin Conservation Plan;

2. ICGS - Integrated Center for GIS Studies - Final Report of the High Paraguay Basin Conservation Plan - PCBAP.

CREDITS

1. MMA - Ministry of Environment, Hydro Resources and Free Amazon;

2. EMBRAPA / CPAP / CNPS - Brazilian Company of Research in Farming and Cattle-Raising / Pantanal Center for Research in Farming and Cattle-Raising / National Center for Soil Research;

3. SEMADES/MS - State Secretariat of Environment and Sustainable Development - Mato Grosso do Sul State;

4. UFRGS/IPH - Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul - Hydraulic Research Institute;

5. FEMA/MT - State Foundation of Environment - Mato Grosso State;

6. UFMT - Federal University of Mato Grosso;

7. UFMS - Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul;

8. IBGE/GO - Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics.

ICGS-GIS-PCBAP TEAM

Coordination: Gilberto Camara Neto, Mirna Luiza Cortopassi Lobo;

Technical Team: André Murta, Cleber Novacovski, Eymar da Silva Sampaio Lopes, José Henrique Ramirez Jamur, Luiz Antônio Pavão, Luiz Eduardo Pinheiro Maurano, Marcelo de Oliveira Rosa, Márcia Cristina Yomura, Marcos Valério Bastian;

Consultants: Alzir Felippe Buffara Antunes, Luiz Eduardo Mantovani, Milton Luiz Brero de Campos, Oscar Salazar Júnior;

Uphold: Franco Amato, Maria Inês de Oliveira, Paula Foltran de Azevedo, Silvana Philippi Camboim.