LANDSCAPE ELEMENTS, WATER RESOURCES AND ECOSYSTEM SERVICES: THEIR RELATIONS TO LOSSES AND GAINS IN A PANTANAL REGION

Abstract

In the last decades, the region of Bonito (Mato Grosso do Sul State . MS) has presented an increase in urban areas, causing impacts on water resources, landscape fragmentation and loss of ecosystem services (ES). Aiming to study the relation chain among land use, water resources and ES, this work determined the influence of the composition from landscape elements and water quality on the offer of three ES (water quality, erosion control and tourism), also defining the critical points between offer of water services and loss of natural resources for urbanization. For this purpose, the following tasks were accomplished: (i) statistical analysis of Pearson correlation and Principal Components Analysis (PCA) to determine the relations between water quality and mapping classes; (ii) elaboration of equations to determine the ES and (iii) analysis of the relation the quality of ESs and the quantity of urbanized areas in several segments of the Formoso river basin (MS). The results showed that at the sub-basin of Bonito stream, the services presented a degradation of around 80% in relation to the Formoso river basin. Besides that, it was verified that one fourth of the urbanized territory caused around 30% of service losses of water quality