Land cover and its relation to cultural landscapes naturalness: the case of Sorocaba (SP)

The cultural landscapes consist in an element resultant from natural components conversion in other land use, process that implies in naturalness landscape loss and interferes in the ecosystem services provision. In this sense, the land use patter analysis and naturalness evaluation provide base to environmental problems comprehension and the human interference on natural systems. Front of this, the present work aimed to verify changes in the land use of Sorocaba (SP) municipality between 2007 and 2017, as well as the analysis of naturalness employing the Urbanity Index (IB). The results showed the predominance of agribusiness activities and urban areas. Reductions in agricultural class and increase of native vegetation were constated. In relation to Urbanity, was verified the predominance of categories that indicates low naturalness and a high anthropic interference, but with the native vegetation increase, occurred an expansion of high and medium naturalness areas. The IB allowed to verify the relation of land use and naturalness in a cultural landscape and pointed elements that should be considered in the planning.