Land Use and Land Cover in the Territory of Seridó UNESCO Global Geopark, Northeast Brazil.

The Seridó UNESCO Global Geopark is a territory of 2802 km² located in the interior of the state of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil, recognized by UNESCO since 2022. The Seridó UNESCO Global Geopark region is located in one of the oldest occupation areas in the interior of Brazil, destined to extensive cattle ranching since the 17th century in semi-arid climatic conditions (average rainfall between 450 and 700 mm per year), being one of the six Desertification Nuclei in Brazil. This article aimed to identify and map the types of land use and land cover in the area. For this, methodological procedures for classifying remote sensing images were applied, based on photointerpretation and manual vectorization techniques, in a geographic information system (GIS). The research classified 11 classes, where anthropized areas stand out (50.63%) that put pressure on most of the 21 geosites; these areas include the classes of degraded vegetation (36.1%), agriculture (5.15%), farming (8.18%), mining (0.34%), urbanized areas (0.6%), and wind farms (0.26%). The conserved natural areas represent (48.15%) of the geopark territory, encompassing facies of shrubby vegetation (30.8%), association of rocky outcrops, colluvium, and shrubby vegetation (6.33%), arboreal vegetation (5%), and apparent riverbed and riparian forest (6.02%). In addition to these classes, there are artificial and natural lakes, with an area of 1.38%. This study was important for the diagnosis of surface cover and land use in geopark in order to discuss alternatives for sustainable economic development, promoting geoconservation, geotourism, and scientific education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]