The landscapes are understood as result of the interaction between its natural elements and its permanent conditioned modifications, or not, by human intervention. Within this design, it is important to understand the history of human actions/interventions on the surface, since many of the past changes define processes occurring in the present, thus having a fundamental role in the organization of the geographical space. Therefore, the objective of this study was to analyze the landscape dynamics in the watershed of São João River (BHRSJ) over the last 35 years by mapping the evolution of the Landcover and Landuse. This analysis was based from thematic maps (1:100.000), generated by object-based classification, using an image from the Landsat 4 MSS satellite (1975) and 3 images from the Landsat 5 TM satellite (1985, 1995, 2010), all related to the dry period. The thematic maps generated were inserted into a GIS environment, where were processed analyses that provided information for the understanding and mapping of the changes occurred in BHRSJ in the last 35 years and thus provided important elements for analyzing the evolution of the landscape in the whole area. The analyses performed from the evolution map of the Landcover and Landuse, and the quantification of changes in the last 35 years, allowed the identification of important transformations, of which we highlight: the loss of natural hedges, the loss of natural water bodies and the emergence of new water bodies (artificial).
Landscape dynamics; land use and cover; object-based image classification; spatial analysis
