patterns of habitat fragmentation in the botucatu – sp cuesta

The overall goal of the present work was to continue studying habitat fragmentation in the Botucatu Cuesta, SP, Brazil, in a 18422-ha study. Landsat-5 TM images were used and a technique was developed to subtract data other than vegetation data from the scene. Thus natural vegetation thematic maps for different dates (1986 and 1993) were generated. The analysis of 1986 and 1993 spatial   data  revealed   that   habitat  fragmentation  in  the  study  area  was  unstable. The  process presented scale distinction, i.e., 1) in  the  largest  patches  subset  the  phenomenon was non-fractal and patch size decreased following a linear tendency; 2) in the intermediary size subset of patches, the phenomenon was non-fractal and patches size decreased in an increasing geometric progression; 3) in the smallest patches subset, the phenomenon was fractal, divided patches tending to follow a geometric progression.