The objective of this study was to define homogeneous environmental sites in the state of Espírito Santo, Brazil which may possibly be used to indicate potential soil use for the entire state. Multivariate statistics techniques were employed using information of the relief and geographical coordinates, as well as soil and climatic data. Water availability and real and potential evapotranspiration were determined from the results of the climatological water balance. Initially a principal component analysis (PCA) for the climatological data was performed. Subsequently, a grouping analysis was executed on the relief, soil and climatic data provided by the PCA and geographical coordinates. The first two axes of the PCA define roughly 85.3% of the total accumulated variance. After rotation of the principal components, the variables that best correlated to the first axis were the thermal amplitude, average annual temperature, followed by real evapotranspiration. Six environmental sites were defined for the state of Espirito Santo, some presenting climatic similarities. The topographic variables were the factors of greatest influence on the sites differentiation. The methodology was appropriate in defining the sites.
climate zoning; multivariate statistics; water balance
