NATIVE VEGETATION DEGRADATION AND IMPLICATIONS OVER CLARO RIVER’S HYDROLOGICAL REGIME, SUB BASIN OF ARAGUAIA RIVER (GO).

Abstract

The Claro River Basin is one of the main sub basins of middle Araguaia river and presents intense environmental degradation as a result of expressive human occupation and replacement of native vegetation for anthropic uses. Based on that, the present study aims to analyze if the native vegetation degradation of Claro River Basin presents a relation with possible discharge reduction of its main channel. For that, land use data, landscape metrics, permanent preservation areas (APP), number of reservoirs, water grants, discharge and precipitation were analyzed together. The results highlight the high native vegetation degradation, with predominance of pasture, increase of fragmentation and reduction of APPs in the last years, besides that only 14,6% of reservoir has been granted by the government; also, it was observed a reduction of rio claro’s mean discharge in 46 years of fluviometric data and a stability of precipitation. Therefore, it’s been concluded that anthropic activity promotes a harmful impact over the hydrological regime of Claro River Basin, because there is not significant alteration of precipitated volume in the last 20 years, so the anthropic aspects were more expressive in the discharge changes than climatic aspects.