Habitat fragmentation in Atlantic Forest remnants in southern Brazil: spatial analysis based on landscape metrics

Abstract

The persistent process of shredding and subdivision of the remnants of the Atlantic Forest compromise the Hotspot of biological diversity, endemism and ecosystem services indispensable to life. Under the Landscape Ecology bias, this article aims to analyze the structural fragmentation of the habitat of forest remnants of the Atlantic Forest in southern Brazil through landscape metrics. The mapping of land use and cover and forest fragments used CBERS 4A/WPM images, processed from QGIS 3.16, submitted to the routines of FRAGSTATS 4.2^® to calculate the ecology indexes. 870 forest fragments with an area of 15,176.06 ha were mapped, corresponding to more than 50% of the study area surface, with a large extension of edges and a high rate of shredding. More than 90% of the fragments are less than 5 ha. The percentage of the landscape occupied by the largest fragment of the class is higher than 85%, corresponding to the two large central fragments (>150 ha) where are two important conservation units of the region. The complexity and sinuosity of the shapes presents irregular and subdivided sections that may be indicative of vulnerability to the larger fragments. However, the high cohesion of the remnants is linked to the large percentage of fragments up to 75 ha.