Landscape structure and slope of a watershed to support a program for payment for environmental services relating to water

Abstract

Payment for Environmental Services (PES) in Brazil is included in climate change policy and is being used to protect water resources, biodiversity, and other assets. The municipality of Ibiúna in São Paulo/SP is adequate for PES because it is located in a strategic position for public water supply and has agricultural production and an Environmental Protection Area APA, Itupararanga. In this context, the watershed of the Murundu Stream, located entirely in the municipality of Ibiúna / SP, was selected for this work. This study involved the interactions between landscape structure, relief and hydrography in this watershed by the classification and cross tabulation of the slope and land use and land cover layers, as input for the generation of a thematic map of priority areas for conservation and preservation of water. The analyses indicate that most of the watershed is dominated by medium/advanced forests (30.1% of the watershed extent) concentrated at the upper parts of the basin and increasing in area as the slope gets steeper. Although a large portion of the watershed is preserved, various uses were observed in areas of permanent preservation. The tools used in this study proved to be useful to supporting decision-making related to the definition of priorities of research and development of public policy in PES relating to water, with a focus on increasing water governance.