Use of High Resolution Images for Evaluating the Sustainability of Green Areas in the City of Passo Fundo-RS

The rapid population growth of cities has caused the removal of vegetation cover raising the waterproofing and the occupation of riverine plains. As an important aspect of urban sustainable planning, the provision of green areas at various scales, should reduce pollution and contribute to the physical, social and psychological care of individuals. Planning, implementing and conserving green areas constitute a good of great value, making it essential for the composition of cities. This research aims to identify, quantify, classify the land use and permanent preservation areas (APPs) inserted in the urban perimeter of Passo Fundo through geoprocessing techniques, seeking to understand the reality of these areas. It was developed with the ArcGIS software, creating and manipulating georeferenced spatial data from municipal database and QuickBird satellite. The survey used a supervised classification tool to generate four classes of land use, together with the analysis of APPs, calculating the total area of these APPs and the area of each class of land use. Demonstrating that the municipality is splitted in about 56% of green areas against 44% of gray/constructed areas. Most of APPs presents arboreal occupation, representing 3% of the urban area and about 39% have an anthropical occupation by buildings, street layout and fields. With the analysis of the images was possible to identify, quantify, classify land use and APPs, generating data for the municipal administration develop public policies that aim sustainability, preservation, conservation and recovery of these areas of APPs, as well subsidies the realization of an urban and environmental planning.