Identificação das alterações do uso e cobertura do solo na bacia hidrográfica do rio Paraíba do Sul de 1986 a 2015 a partir de imagens Landsat

Land use and cover (LUC) interfere directly quantity and quality in water of a watershed, which is a territorial planning unit. The objective of this work paper was to quantify and identify possible trends in land use and cover behavior in basin Paraíba do Sul River. This watershed has a drainage area of approximately 62,074 km² and includes 184 municipalities distributed between the states of São Paulo, Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro. Landsat satellite images for the years 1986, 1991, 1996, 2001, 2005, 2010 and 2015 were used to extract information on land use and cover. The analysis of changes in LUC, as well as the quantification of deforestation caused by forest changes to savannas and urban area in the watershed it was elaborate in Dinamica EGO software. The results indicate that the predominant class is savannas, which accounts for about 69.80% of the watershed area. It was observed that deforestation in basin Paraíba do Sul River has a decreasing behavior between 1986 and 2015. It was concluded that the results can be helpful in the elaboration of future works that look for to study the influence of the land use and cover changes in the hydrological cycle.