Erosion Risk Mapping Applied to Environmental Zoning

Water erosion caused by inappropriate land use compromises the ecosystems and causes economic and social losses. To remedy this, the present study proposes (i) the evaluation of the erosion risk in an Environmental Protection Area (EPA) with the combination of Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE), soil loss tolerance (T) estimates adapted to Brazilian soils and the legislation; and (ii) control measures from environmental zoning. This was applied to the EPA of Lageado stream, one of the main surface water sources in Campo Grande, Brazil. Several referenced information plans were overlapped and the total area was divided into five zones with different land use profiles, which were determined according to the conservation and preservation of native vegetation, occurrence of wet areas and springs, land use and management, eroded area recovery and occurrence of permanently preserved areas. The methodology proposed was suitable for environmental zoning of protected areas. This protocol can be applied to other areas by including additional variables such as social and economic parameters.