Clinographic, land use, land cover and soil loss classification in the Socorro River watershed, RS

Abstract

The fundamental condition for the management of water catchment watersheds is to know their physical characteristics among them are slope, land use and land cover, and soil loss. Knowing them makes possible the planning and taking actions that guarantee not only quality and availability of water use, but also an environmental sanity and local ecological balance. In this context, the objective of the study is to analyze and characterize the Socorro River watershed, located at northeast of Rio Grande do Sul, focusing on slope, clinography, soil use and land cover, and local soil loss. Thereunto, there were used geographic information systems (GIS), cartographic data, such as hydrography and contour and data coming from remote sensors aim to generate slope, land use and land cover and soil loss maps. The obtained results indicate that the watershed is mostly flat and slightly wavy. Related to the soil loss at the watershed, approximately 90% of its areas were classified as the least susceptible class. About the land use and land cover, stands out the anthropic occupation of agriculture (258.62 km², 49.10%) replacing the native vegetation, considering that the last one occupies a representative area at watershed’s outfall (244.24 km², 46.37%). These data serve as base for depth works in the area and for the management of the watershed.