Avaliação da expansão do citrus no município de Botucatu-SP utilizando Mineração de Dados e Análise de Imagem Orientada ao Objeto

The monitoring of the dynamics of citrus-growing areas and their physical characteristics can be accomplished with the use of remote sensing techniques and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The objective of this work is the description of the physical environment (altitude and slope), the quantification and the location of citrus crops in the city of Botucatu-SP for the years 2000 and 2011 through image processing and geoprocessing techniques. This work was developed using the bands 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 7 of the TM/Landsat-5 and SRTM data. Object Based Image Analysis (OBIA) was employed to identify the citrus areas. Between 2000 and 2011, there was an increase of 88% of the citrus area. In 2011, approximately 53% of the total citrus area is on mild wavy terrain and 37% is on wavy terrain. A slight increase of citrus cultivation is observed over areas of strongly wavy relief, while cultivation is not found on mountainous and/or steep relief. It appears that during the 11-year period, there was a decrease of citrus areas at altitudes above 700m and an increase in the intervals from 450 to 600m. It is noteworthy that in 2011, only 10% of these areas were distributed at altitudes appropriate to their development.