IMAGENS TERMAIS COMO INDICADORAS DA DEGRADAÇÃO DE SERVIÇOS ECOSSISTÊMICOS

O CASO DE GUARULHOS, SP, BRASIL

Abstract

Thermal images, in addition to revealing the microclimatic conditions of urban areas, are an important tool for analyzing the distribution of ecosystem services in a region. These images reveal the local thermal conditions, representing the service of regulation of surface temperature (TS), which has a strong correlation with land use and is an important indicator of the presence of several ecosystem services. The analysis was applied to the municipality of Guarulhos, Metropolitan Region of São Paulo (RMSP)/Brazil in a multitemporal way, for the years 1985, 2003 and 2014, based on geoprocessing and interpretation of the images from Landsat satellites. It was observed that, in the analyzed region, the average tendency of increase, with differences up to 6ºC between urban areas and vegetated areas. TS hotspots higher than 40ºC were mainly observed in the industrial areas and at Guarulhos International Airport. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) showed three zones with different degrees of thermal conditions, indicating the potential of "loss", "supply with loss" and "supply" of ecosystem services. The spatial variation of these zones showed that from the 47 districts of the municipality, only one maintained 100% of its area with total provision of the ecosystem service of TS maintenance; 10 oscillated between “offered with loss” and “loss” and 36 presented very low indices revealing a strong loss of ecosystem services due to the urbanization process from 1985 to 2014.