10-Years Land Use Changes Decrease Landscape Integrity in a Brazilian Hydrographic Basin

Changes in land use associated with the suppression of native vegetation can greatly alter the landscape configuration, affecting biodiversity and environmental services availability. This study analyzes how changes in land use affect landscape patterns of vegetation remnant over a 10 year period. We quantified spatial landscape patterns throughout a hydrographic basin for the years 2002, 2008, 2010 and 2012, using nine landscape metrics. An indicator of integrity was used to details the transformation processes occurring in the basin that could be used to monitor the impact of landscape changes and its spatial patterning. Results showed that over this decade, extension of farming activities reduced the cover of native vegetation by 4.4%, with grassy-woody savanna, wooded savanna and forested savanna impacted especially strongly. Suppression of vegetation across this period reduced the size of fragments and their connectivity. The landscape fragmentation indicator indicated that the fragmentation pattern varied spatially, with the upland areas along river headwaters, being most fragmented. Areas of floodplains vegetation, belonged to the Pantanal Wetland, although in better integrity states, are the most threatened by current pressures of land use change. An intense recovery program for headwaters and aquifer recharge areas, as well as riparian forests, is recommended to avoid the future depletion of water production. Besides, we also recommend the maintenance and recovering of the connectivity of the current remaining patches of natural vegetation corridors and elaboration of specific laws that incoporate the consolidated scientific knowladge about wetland ecosystem functioning, like the Pantanal. How to cite this paper: Estevam, L.S., Arieira, J., Zeilhofer, P. and Calheiros, D.F. (2017) 10-Years Land Use Changes Decrease Landscape Integrity in a Brazilian Hydrographic Basin. Journal of Geographic Information System, 9, 221-243. https://doi.org/10.4236/jgis.2017.92014 Received: February 22, 2017 Accepted: April 27, 2017 Published: April 30, 2017 Copyright © 2017 by authors and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Open Access DOI: 10.4236/jgis.2017.92014 April 30, 2017 L. S. Estevam et al.


Introduction
Changes in land use associated with the suppression of native vegetation are of great concern to human populations because of its consequences for biodiversity loss, climate change, carbon sequestration, food provision, and other ecosystem services, such as maintaining the quality and availability water [1].Recently, the speed at which these changes occurred, associated with technological developments and economic interests, is leading the world to an unsustainable trajectory [2].
Among the biggest changes associated with the removal of vegetation cover is the fragmentation of native vegetation [3] [4].The fragmentation process is represented by the increase in the number of fragments or remnant patches in a landscape [5].Furthemore, the loss of native vegetation can affect the spatial structure of the landscape in various ways.Loss of the same amount of remaining area, for example, can result in an increased number of fragments, as well as in no changes in the landscape configuration.One large remaining contiguous patch can become numerous small and isolated fragments [6].The direction of these changes is not easy to predict because it depends on several factors that act integrally, including the biophysical heterogeneity of the environment and the socio-economic and political influences on the human activities transforming the landscape [7] [8].
The impacts of habitat fragmentation on biodiversity conservation and management have been widely discussed [3] [6] [9] [10].Fragmentation can result in the formation of landscapes with little diversity in terms of habitat and species [3].A new landscape mosaic composed of remnants of native vegetation, surrounded by disturbed areas, impacts and changes the dispersal and movement of species across that landscape.Endemic species are more likely to be impacted, because of their smaller capacity for dispersion and their habitat specialization [9].Fragmentation reduces the connectivity of the landscape and, therefore, the ability of species to travel between habitat patches, resulting in changes in species distribution patterns [11] [12], and an increase in the possibility of local extinctions [13].Species extinction can have a strong impact on the integrity of ecosystems, since component species regulate the availability of environmental resources, control population densities through inter-specific interactions, and are integrated into a range of environmental services, such as water cycling, soil formation, nutrient and energy fixation, and climate maintenance [14].
The success of sustainable conservation and use strategies in ecosystems depends on adequate information across a variety of formats, including documents, images and maps that together indicate the direction and speed of change.Together, these can be used to plan land use management that can be conducted to ensure the availability of ecosytem services over the long term.
Geographic information systems and analysis of spatial patterns provide an analytical approach to investigate change in spatio-termporal patterns of land use and cover, assisting in the detection of changes in such factors and determining the distribution and extent of modified areas [15] [16] [17].A large number of indices have been developed to quantify the spatial heterogeneity of landscape in categorized maps [7] [18] [19].These indices fall into two general types, which together affect how ecological processes are recorded and how this translates into perceived changes in landscape patterns.They are: 1) indices which evaluate the composition of a map without reference to such spatial attributes such as shape and size of a fragment; and 2) indices which assess the spatial configuration of system properties, and require spatial information, such as levels of patch isolation and connectivity, for their calculation [7].
The use of landscape indices or metrics to characterize changes in ecosystem services, landscape functions and integrity caused by logging, agriculture and urbanization has been increasing at the last decade [2].These are key attributes indicating the integrity of a system, related to the degree of influence of human activities and the system capability to maintain natural communities [20].In large scales, monitoring rates of vegetation suppression have revealed the speed in which remaining natural habitats are loss.This information indicates the clearing extent across bioregions, but lack to provide an indication of the consequences of habitat loss to landscape configuration, in special, connectivity, which may play deep effects on conservation of biodiversity [9] [21].Detecting and monitoring the impact of human activities on landscape status may be done by integrating a set of complementary landscape indices, rather than describing them separately [22].
The aim of the study was to analyze the spatial and temporal changes in land use and cover and fragmentation of remaining native vegetation from 2002 to 2012 in a Brazilian hydrographic basin and to provide an indicator of landscape integrity (ILI) that can be used to monitor the landscape status over time and space.In this study we ask: 1) what was the suppression rate of native vegetation over a 10-yearperiod; 2) what were the main changes in the landscapes pattern over 10 years, and 3) how these changes affected landscape integrity.

Study Area
This study was conducted in the hydrographic basin of the Miranda-Aquidauana Rivers (hereafter called Miranda basin), located in the midwest region of the Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil (Figure 1).The basin has a drainage area of 43,787  The annual evaporation is about 1140 mm [23].
There are contrasting relief forms in the basin, with plateaus and hilly terrains in altitudes up to 500 meters (e.g., the Serra do Maracajú and Bodoquena), and elevations lower than 200 min the Pantanal Wetland.The presence of basaltic rocks in parts of the plateau, especially in the Serra do Maracaju and Bodoquena is associated with local presence of fertile soils, such as purple eutrophic Oxisol, and structured eutrophic terra roxa.Calcareous-dolomitic rocks are also present in Serra da Bodoquena, what makes this region more vulnerable to deforasta-tion.In the valleys of Aquidauana and Miranda rivers, there are dark red alic Latosols and Regosols, respectively.Typic Natrustalf predominates in the pre-Pan-tanal lowlands [23].
The vegetation belongs to the Cerrado phytogeographic domain.Most of the upland areas are covered with deciduous and semi-deciduous Cerrado.Forest formations under fluvial influence (e.g.cambarazal, carandazal) followed by grassy-woody savanna dominate in the Pantanal [24] [25].Because of its high biodiversity and elevated threat level, the Cerrado biome is a hotspot for biodiversity conservation, having a high risk of being increasingly reduced to smaller vegetation fragments [26] [27].The agricultural expansion is favoured by the disconect between environmental legislation and land policy and is the principal responsible for deforastation of its native vegetation formations [27], modifying the structure, composition and functioning of Cerrado ecosystems [28].
The basin includes seven sustainable use protected areas, three fully-protected conservation units (e.g.Serra da Bodoquena National Park) and eight areas of indigenous land, which together amount to approximately 4% of the total area (Figure 1).Because it is an area of high ecological value, 51% of the basin was decreed as a conservation priority area by the Ministry of the Environment through the Decree number 5092 of 21 May 2004, and through the Ordinance number 126 of 27 May 2004.The 23 municipalities in the basin have different socioeconomic profiles [23].
On the plateaus predominates agriculture, while on the lowlands, e.g. the Pantanal, livestock are dominant.The main activities threatening conservation of the region's fauna and flora are mining, and the extraction of charcoal and timber, which have increased very quickly in the state.These activities are closely linked to cattle-raising, because the vegetation removal that starts the process is the result of partnerships between cattle ranchers, interested in increasing their area under exotic pasturage, and the owners of charcoal and lumber concerns, who require wood to their enterprises [29].Irrigated rice cultivation, soyabean/crop consortium and planted eucalyptus forest are also current management activities that threats ecosystem integrity.

Watershed Delimitation
Watersheds are appropriate spatial units for the evaluation of impacts caused by human activity, especially when these are related to land use and may pose risks to maintainence of sutainable water resource availability in quality and quantity [30].
In order to detail the process of landscape change in the Miranda basin and relate this to the regional hydrological and socioeconomic characteristics, we subdivided the basin in 6 watersheds, using the fluvial level gauges for drainage  of Environment [31].The monitoring for the years of 2008, 2010 and 2012 [32] followed the same technical procedures and were based on the LUC map of 2002 [31].Only for the year of 2012, the LUC map was generated based on Resource-Sat-1 LISS III, which have similar spatial and spectral characteristics [32].

Land Use and Cover
Long-term land use change studies frequently do not allow quantitative field validation, principal of historical landscape stages [33].The methodology adopted in the works of interpretation of the images of satellite allowed corrections in the period from 2002 to 2012, giving the mapping greater reliability regarding detected changes.In areas where Landsat/Resource-Sat interpretations were doubtful, class identification and extensive qualitative validation were conducted by regional experts using high-resolution satellite data such as QuickBird and World View available within Google Earth and CBERS HRC imagery [31].Detailed LUC were grouped into 14 classes, seven for anthropogenic areas, six for remaining areas of native vegetation and one representing water bodies (Figure 2).Anthropogenic areas refer to the suppression of native vegetation by: urban influence, anthropogenic change, natural change/management, degraded by mining, grazing, agriculture and plantation forestry.The remnants of native vegetation are classified according to phytogeographical aspects and vegetation characterized by the dominant life form (i.e.herbaceous, shrub or tree) [32].The six classes for native vegetation are: forest formations, forest savanna (cerradão), woody savanna (cerradosensustricto), grassy-woody savanna (campo), steppe savanna (Chaco) and the vegetation with riverine influence.

Quantifying Spatial Patterns
We quantified spatial landscape patterns throughout the Miranda basin and its six watersheds for the years 2002, 2008, 2010 and 2012, using nine (9) landscape metrics (Table 1).These indices or metrics describe aspects of remnant vegetation patch mosaic composition and configuration, i.e., area, density, size, edge, shape, connectivity and diversity [15] facilitating monitoring human impacts on the natural landscape [18] [19].The indices used in this study are described in Table 1.They are based on the concept of patches, that is, landscape elements that differ in structure and composition from its matrix or surroundings [15].In this  Sum the patches in all class areas or the fragments of native vegetation present in the area.

MNN
Mean distance to nearest neighbor meters The mean nearest neighbor Euclidian distance between closest patches

CONN Connectivity adimensional
Number of functional connections between all fragments over a determined distance, divided by the total number of possible connections between these fragments ( ) ( )

Diversity index SDI Shannons diversity index adimensional
Estimate of the relative abundance and variability of the different types of vegetation n n [34].To allow comparisons between the 6 watersheds of different sizes (Table 2), the number of patches in each watershed was normalized by the area of the largest watershed of the Miranda basin (i.e. the Upper Miranda River).The metric border extent (ED) is based on the calculation of the total perimeter edge of fragments (km) per unit area (ha), playing a key role in defining ecotones, ecoclinas and ecotypes [35] Besides ED indicates the variation in heterogeneity and the extent of landscape fragmentation [36], because the amount of edge in a lands capre generally increases with fragmentation [18].The shape index (MSI) was used to evaluate changes in patch shape, from complex to simple forms associated with anthropic land use classes, such as agricultural or urban areas [18].
The MSI ranges from 1, for patches with a very simple shapes (squares) and can increase infinitely to reflect complex patch forms [35] [37].The index of connectivity (CONN) measures the number of connections between patches or small and/or isolated units [18].The distance of 1000 meters between fragments used in the current study was based on species with intermediate capability for movement, such as the following bird species: Amazon aestiva (Blue-fronted Amazon), Psarocoliusdecumanus (Crested Oropendola) and Campylorhamphustrochilirostris (Red-billed Scythebill) [40].The metric distance from the nearest neighbor (MNN), unlike CONN, analyzes by how much a fragment is isolated from another in terms of Euclidian distance.From the landscape ecology perspective, it refers to the inaccessibility of a habitat fragment for organisms migrating from other patches [41] and is measured by the nearest edge-to-edge distance [42].The Shannon Diversity Index (SDI) was calculated to assess the physiognomic variability of the remaining natural vegetation in the analyzed polygons, i.e., the whole basin and in each watershed.The value zero is present only when the landscape contains a single class, increasing as the number of classes increases and the proportion of each class within the landscape becomes more equitable [38].
ArcGIS 10.2 software, with the extention Patch Analyst [43], except for the connectivity index, which was calculated using FRAGSTAT 4.2 [34].

Indicator of Landscape Integrity
The indicator of integrity was used to detail the transformation processes occurring in the Miranda basin, helping to monitor the impacts of landscape changes on fragmentation processes.For this, the 9 landscape metrics (M) calculated for each watershed were combined into an addition/subtraction equation to create the Index of Landscape Integrity (ILI) (Equation ( 1)) [44].Each index was pre-L.S. Estevam et al.
viously transformed to values ranging between zero (0) and one (1).The equation sign used (addition or subtraction) was based on the relationship of the n metrics, negative or positive, within the landscape fragmentation processes, as based on the literature [3] [27] [45].

Loss of Native Vegetation Fragments in the Miranda Basin
More than half of the Miranda basin is deforested, with loss of its native vegetation of more than 1880 square kilometers in the period of 10 years, corresponding to a reduction of 4.4% of the total area.
Exotic pasture was the most proeminent landuse, and also the activity which most increased between 2002 and 2010 (Figure 3).In 2002, 47% of the landscape was composed of pasture (20,215.04km 2 ), by 2010 this was 50.57% (21,723.34km 2 ). Figure 3 (a) shows that between 2010 to 2012 pasture cover decreased by 153 km 2 .This was the period during which agriculture showed the strongest growth (1.1% of its original area, reaching 2,993,399 km 2 in 2012).The remaining vegetation with largest coverage in the basin are the forest formations with 4701 km 2 , followed by grassy-woody savanna (3984.311km 2 ) and woody savanna (3752.84 km 2 ).Vegetation types in the Miranda basin maintained the same order of dominance over the years, although their loss rates varied.The biggest losses occurred for the grassy-woody savannas, with a decrease of 1.55% since

10-Years Changes in Lanscape Integrity
The current progress of vegetation fragmentation in the basin was analysed using a synthetic index (Indicador of Landscape Integrity-ILI) obtained from the nine assessed landscape metrics (Figure 4), which provides an empiric indicator of the state of landscape integrity (Equation ( 2)).

ILI CA SDI CONN MSI MPS MNN ED Nump PSSD
The indicator varied from −2.12, indicating the lowest landscape integrity state, to 2.88, indicating highest landscape integrity related to fragmentation processes and native vegetation loss.
These resulted from remnant vegetation covering small areas (28%, 26% and  2).LMR presented a high coverage by natural vegetation, large fragments, high habitat diversity and low isolation between its remaining fragments, which gave it the highest landscape integrity (2.77) (Figure 5).This watershed, although highly-vegetated, showed low connectivity (Figure 4   In the current study, we investigated the process of fragmentation and loss of savanna and forest formations within the Miranda Basin between 2002 and 2012.

Discussion
We did this using landscape metrics and integrated index which allowed the spatial and temporal evaluation of ecological integrity of the watersheds landscape.
In Seasonal deciduous and semideciduous forests and forest-savanna forest transitions are the predominant formations of the remaining natural vegetation in the Miranda basin (11%).Though the cover loss over the 10 years study period was limited (0.6%), it represents huge losses for biodiversity and landscape con-nectivity.The loss of connectivity can affect the mobility of groups that are specialists in the forest habitats of the region [60], such as bird species that rely on riparian forest corredors to move between distant habitats in favorable phases of the year or during mating seasons [61] [62].In general, isolation acts negatively on species richness by reducing immigration rate.Species that manage to survive in isolated fragments tend to become dominant [63] and thus habitat diversity decreases by a decrease of richness and biological evenness.Since these forests generally occupy protected areas in the basin, such as river banks, any reduction implies in heavy losses for the regional biodiversity.These impacts on wetland habitats deserve special attention, because it directly affects the quantity and quality of water available in the watershed [25].The conservation of these wetlands can help ensure water security of the country against negative climate change scenarious, as well as meeting national and international agreements (Convention Ramsar, Iran, 1971) to protect Brazilian wetlands [66].
In Brazil over the last 40 years, environmental policy had made great advances (Law N˚. 4771 of 15/9/1965) with the creation of many conservation units and delimitation of protected areas on private property.However, the recent loosening of legislation was a strongly retrograde step (e.g.Brazil's New Forest Code 2012), reducing protected habitats, such as riparian forests, forests on slope greater than 45˚ and in legal reserves [67].It shows that the expansion of agricultural frontiers still commands the future of Brazil's natural landscapes.Conservation strategies for native vegetation remnants must have broad prospects, given that ecosystems and their environmental services are not isolated in landscapes altered by anthropogenic uses and operate at the large-scale, facilitating connectivity between natural and anthropogenic ecosystems [68].
Based on the state of integrity in the Miranda basin, it can be seen that deforestation is increasing, and that resulting changes in the landscape configuration tend to be more evident in areas with higher proportions of remaining native vegetation.In this regard, the watersheds that comprise most of the lowland areas (LMR and MAR), and the watershed which houses the Serra da Bodoquena (MMR), clearly require further biodiversity conservation policies [69].This is supported by results of this study and other research on the status of regional habitats and their biodiversity [23] [27] [33] [34] [56].Areas of Permanent Preservation (APP) and Legal Reserves (RL) form one of the main mechanisms for the protection of biodiversity in Brazil [70].Those present in the Miranda basin require intensive supervision so that the representativeness of the remaining vegetation of the Brazilian biomes also is guaranteed on private property.

Conclusions
The removal of native vegetation in the Miranda basin over the studied 10 years period (2002-2012) was 4.4%.The deforestation during this time mainly resulted from the expansion of livestock and agriculture activities.Although agriculture within the study area currently occurs to a lesser extent, it has the potential to grow via the conversion of exotic pastures and advance in lowland areas that currently still retain substantial native vegetation cover.
The loss of native vegetation occurred mainly in grassy-woody savanna, and in semideciduous and deciduous forests, resulting in strong impacts on landscape connectivity between the plains and the plateau.
The main consequences of vegetation suppression on landscape patterns were increase in number and isolation of fragments and higher vulnerability of the remnants to external pressures, such as fire and invasions.Headwater areas had become more fragmented, while fragmentation is lower in the lowlands.However, although native vegetation is better preserved in the lowlands, those exhibited a higher vegetation loss during the observation period, warning to the need of creating legal instruments that guarantee the wise use of natural and maneged spaces.
The conservation of the remaining native vegetation should be ensured by maintaining the connectivity of vegetation mosaics, both within protected areas and outside them.Legal instruments such as resolutions, normative instructions, and mainly state and municipal laws and decrees, as well as the participation of the farm owners creating privete reserves should help the conservation of these areas in order to regulate the sustainable use of the landscape.It is imperative that government, owners and society in general understand that the limit of sustainability of the Miranda hydrographic basin has already been exceeded in most of its area, undermining their resilience and biodiversity conservation.
We recommend an intense recovery program for headwaters and aquifer re-

km 2 .
The study site lies between the coordinates 19˚20'21.5"Sand 22˚1"28.4'Sand 57˚27'56.1"W,54˚25"40.3'W,an area of some 44,740.50km 2 .The Miranda basin is part of the Upper Paraguay River Basin and according with the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistic (IBGE) it is 83% within the Cerrado (Brazilian savanna) and 17% in the Pantanal Biome.It is bordered to the north by the

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Location and subdivisions of the Miranda River hydrographic Basin.
watershed limitation in the river monitoring belonged to the National Water Agency (ANA), as implemented in the Finep/CT-Hidro Project entitled "Development of Watershed Quality Indicators for the Tietê/Jacaré (state of São Paulo) and Miranda (state of Mato Grosso do Sul) rivers for Water Quality Maintenance".Headwaters areas were represented by 3 watersheds: the Upper Aquidauana-River (UAR); the Headwaters of Varadouro-Taquaruçu River (HTR); and the Upper Miranda River (UMR).Mid basin units were represented by the intermediate reaches of the Aquidauana (Middle Aquidauana River-MAR) and the Miranda (Middle Miranda River-MMR); whereas the lowest portions of the basin was represented by the Lower Miranda River (LMR) that crosses the Pantanal floodplain.
Data on the spatial distribution of land use and cover (LUC) were provided in shape file by the Socio-Environmental Institute of the Upper Paraguay River Basin (BAP)-SOS Pantanal.The LUC map for the year 2002 in a 1:50.000scale was generated based on visual interpretation of Landsat TM satellite imagery and other ancillary data set provided by the Brazilian Program of Conservation and Sustainable Use of Biological Diversity (PROBIO), coordinated by the Ministry

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. Land use classification of the Miranda River hydrographic Basin in 2012.Inset, topographic map of the Miranda basin.Source: SOS Pantanal (2014).
study, patches are considered the remaining fragments of the 6 classes of native vegetation surrounded by areas of human use, such as exotic grasslands and agriculture.The year 2012 was the reference, considered as the current spatial situation of the landscape.The area of the class (CA) corresponds to the area occupied by the savanna and forest fragments.The average fragment size (MPS), the patch size standard deviation (PSSD) and the number of patches (NumP) are key indices for landscape structure analysis and indicate the way in which a landscape is fragmented −1 Quantity of length of edge (TE)relative to total area (CA) adimensional Measures the complexity of patch form.Is equal to 1 when all the patches are squares and increases with the growth of irregularity in the form of the patch 1 0.25

2002 (Figure 3 (
b)).Woody and forest savannas were reduced by 1.4% and 0.8%, respectively.These losses mainly occurred from 2002 to 2008, a period that coincides with an increase in exotic pastures (Figure3(a) and Figure3(b)).For instance, the annual loss rate for tree cover was 0.09% from 2002 to 2008; dropping to 0.03% from 2008 to 2010 and to 0.02% from 2010 to 2012.Cover of steppe savanna and vegetation with fluvial influences were not reduced.

Figure 3 .
Figure 3. (a) Changes in the proportion of fragments of native vegetation in the Miranda River Hydrographic Basin between 2002 and 2012, and (b) changes in human use.Positive and negative variation values indicate gains and loss in land cover over time.

Figure 4 .
Figure 4. Changes in the landscape configuration and composition in the Miranda River Hydrographic Basin between 2002 and 2012 evaluated using 9 metrics, as follows: (a) Patch Area; (b) Mean Patch Size; (c) Patch Size Standard Deviation; (d) Number of Patches; (e) Edge Density; (f) Mean Patch Shape; (g) Mean Nearest Neighbor Distance; (h) Patch Connectivity Index; (i) Shannon Diversity Index.Losses and gains are shown as percentage change these values over the 10 years.Negative variation values indicate loss.

Figure 5 .
Figure 5. Temporal changes in landscape integrity in the 6 watersheds in the Miranda basin.Indicador of Landscape Integrity (ILI) was obtained from nine landscape metrics, which provides an empiric indicator of the state of landscape integrity.The metrics were transformed into values ranging between 0 and 1. CA: proportion of remaining vegetation; NUMP: number of fragments, MPS: mean patch size, PSSD: standard deviation of patch shape, ED: edge density MSI: mean shape index, CONN: connectivity, MNN: distance from the nearest neighbor, SDI: Shannon diversity.ILI varies from −2.12, indicating the lowest landscape integrity state, to 2.88, indicating highest landscape integrity related to fragmentation processes and native vegetation loss.

Figure 6 .
Figure 6.Exemple of loss of connectivity in the Miranda River hydrographic Basin.

Figure 7 .
Figure 7. Loss of native vegetation in the Miranda River hydrographic Basin during 2002, 2008, 2010 and 2012.
charge areas, as well as riparian forests, especially in the watersheds Upper Aquidauana River, Headwaters of Varadouro-Taquaruçu Rivers and Upper Miranda River to avoid the future compromising of water production.Besides, we also recommend the maintenance and recovering of the connectivity of the current remaining patches of natural vegetation corridors (Figure5) and that the watersheds Middle Aquidauana River and Lower Miranda River should keept conserved by a program of zero deforestation and through specific laws that incoporate the consolidated scientific knowladge about wetland ecosystem functioning, like the Pantanal[71].

Table 1 .
[34]scape patterns metrics used to describe aspects of the composition and configuration of the Miranda River Hydrographic Basin.Source:[34].

Table 2 .
Socioenvironmental characteristics of the 6 watersheds of the Miranda River hydrographic Basin.
[39]ments of native vegetation within a distance of 1000 meters of one another, through both the inter-dispersion of patch types[38](e.g.mixture of different patch classes), and patch dispersion (i.e.spatial distribution of patch classes)[39].High CONN values indicate landscapes with patches that are either numerous, or large and close together, whereas low values indicate landscapes with [65]nna vegetation suffered the highest areal reduction in the last 10 years within the basin, in special, the native grasslands.Between 2002 and 2012 the reduction was 1.55% with substitution of natural grasslands mostly by exotic pasture.Similarly, Rocha et al.[64], analyzing deforestation in the Cerradobiome between 2002 and 2009, found a reduction rate for native grasslands of 3.63%.The conversion of native grasslands to planted ones, usually formed by grasses of African origin (e.g.Brachiaria spp.), is considered the major forms of vegetation change in the Cerrado.Causing an immediate reduction of local species diversity, it increases the risk of invasion by alien species and burning[65].