Análise da estrutura da paisagem da Bacia Hidrográfica do Alto Paraguai

The Upper Paraguay Basin (UPB) has an extension of approximately 368,000 Km2, 73% of them within Brazilian territory. UPB’s main rivers and springs are located at the Brazilian Plateau and are responsible for the water support and dynamics of the Pantanal area. This goal of this article is the quantification, measurement and understanding of UPB''S landscape structure, applying landscape metrics. Vectorial data was made available by the technical support “ Monitoramento das alterações de cobertura vegetal e uso do solo na Bacia do Alto Paraguai”. The Area was differentiated in Natural Units, Anthropic Units, and Bodies of Water, each one divided into classes. Analysis was performed by Patch Analyst 5.1 and ArcGis 10.2. The following metric categories were used to collect the data: Shape, Border, Density, Size and Variability, and Area. Anthropic Units represent 41.74% of UPB''s total area, with the biggest extension belonging to the UA class, at 38.68%. Anthropic Units’ classes also show the highest amount of fragmentation, at 43,121 for UA and 24,227 for AA. This number represents 52.93% of UPB''S total fragments. The Border Effect, associated with the irregular outline of the fragments, are found within the FF class, holding the largest number among the Natural Units’ classes. The elevated amount of fragmentation of the Anthropic Units shows a trend of ongoing fragmentation of the Upper Paraguay Basin, specially at its borders. Palavras-chave: fragmentation, ecology, spatial analysis, pantanal, fragmentação, ecologia, análises espaciais, pantanal.