Comparison between temperature and air relative humidity in Atlantic Rainforest fragments in São Paulo Metropolitan Region urban and rural areas

Abstract

This study aims to compare the microclimates of two forest fragments, physically similar but with different uses of their surrounding lands. The first one is in an urban area of São Paulo municipality, and the second one is in an agricultural and forest area in Caucaia do Alto, Cotia Municipality. To altain this aim, temperature and air relative humidity recorders were installed in a tree of each fragment at the heights of 0,5; 6; 9 and 12 meters, from two months, with hourly registers in order to obtain the fragments vertical profiles of temperature and air relative humidity. From the results it was concluded that the urban are must influence in microclimatic variation of the forest fragments, since the temperature and air relative humidity data were different under the same atmospheric conditions. In the urban area it was recorded higher temperatures and lower relative humidity. Key words: forest fragment, temperature,air relative humidity, microclimate