Understanding the Pattern of Atlantic Forest Fragmentation: Preliminary Results of Exploratory Data Analysis for an Area of the South East of Bahia, Brazil

Abstract

Since the first European colonisation, the exploitation of the Mata Atlantica (Brazilian Atlantic forest) has been so strong that nowadays only 7% of the original extent is left. The forest land cover is highly fragmented and the further process of forest fragmentation would seriously threaten the biological diversity of Mata Atlantica. This paper presents the first results of the application of a flexible integrated information monitoring system designated to control the forest fragmentation of Mata Atlantica. The application is done with data of an area of South Bahia (Brazil), that was very important for the cocoa breeding (Rio Cachoeira catchment), in order to show how to detect the relationships between the changes of forest land cover fragmentation and the changes of some socio-economic data from 1988 to 2001. The results show that in these last decades the landscape pattern of forest did not change significantly, correlation analysis based on fuzzy set theory proved that the forested area was expanding with new patches near the urban areas however the forested areas decreased in the poorest rural municipalities were the population and the gross domestic product were decreasing too.