CONSTRUCTING A VEGETATION MAP IN THE DIVERSE ATLANTIC FOREST OF BRAZIL 
John M. Pye, Alzir Felippe B. Antunes, and Maria Vitöria Yamada Müller 
Southern Research Station, USDA Forest Service 
Research Triangle Park, NC, USA; 
Centro Integrado de Estudos em Geoprocessamento (CIEG), Universidade Federal do Paraná (UFPR) 
Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil; and 
Sociedade de Pesquisa em Vida Selvagem e Educagáo Ambiental (SPVS) 
Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil (respectively) 
ABSTRACT 
The 313,400 ha reserve of Guaraquegaba in southern Brazil is part of the largest remaining fragment of the 
Atlantic Forest, one of the most diverse yet endangered ecosystems in the world. To support conservation 
and ecotourism planning there we needed current, digital information on deforestation and vegetation cover. 
To create our GIS coverage we used bands 2 to 5 from one cloud-free Landsat TM image, and GPS-located 
training plots which we established across the region. GPS receivers were also used to establish control 
points for georeferencing and to digitize roads and ecotourism sites. We had intended to rely solely on 
supervised methods for image classification, but several factors forced us to modify our approach: 1) 
elevation ranged from sea level to more than 1500 m, providing diverse field conditions and mountain 
shadows, 2) plots omitted some vegetation types, and 3) the area's plentiful rain prevented drought stress 
signatures and slowed plot establishment. A combination of unsupervised classification, stratification, 
supervised classification, and on-screen, manual digitization yielded better results. We are now working to 
improve the classification and extend its application to a second, historical image, and to augment land cover 
analyses using other Guaraqueçaba coverages just now becoming available. 
1. INTRODUCTION 
The Atlantic Forest ecosystem runs in a strip 
along the mountainous coast of southeastern Brazil 
and is one of the most biotically diverse ecosystems 
in the world, more even than its famous cousin the 
Amazon (Peixoto, 1992). The region's well-watered 
tropical conditions make it especially rich in 
epiphytes such as orchids and bromeliads, but other 
taxa are also incredibly diverse. Typical tree species 
diversity is about 120-160 per hectare (Klein, 1995). 
Many species are found nowhere else in the world: 
perhaps half of the tree species and two thirds of 
herbaceous plants are endemic to this ecosystem 
(Peixoto, 1992). 
Unfortunately, most of the ecosystem is lost 
to development, and most of what remains is in 
small, isolated fragments (Cámara, 1992). One study 
found only nine percent of the original Atlantic 
Forest of Paraná remained in 1990 (Fundaçäo SOS 
Mata Atlántica and INPE, 1992). At 313,400 ha, the 
environmental protection area (APA) of Guaraque- 
çaba in the State of Paraná (Figure 1) makes up 
much of this ecosystem's largest remaining fragment 
(Stolzenburg, 1993). 
As the poorest part of the state of Paraná and 
located just 50 km from its capital of Curitiba, the 
APA Guaraqueçaba is a ready target for rural 
development. With the second largest city in the 
world, Sáo Paulo, just 250 km from its border, 
pressures for beach development are already being 
felt. Its reserve status provides some measure of legal 
protection, but most of the reserve remains in private 
hands. Past experience suggests that legal restrictions 
may not be adequate without more fundamental 
economic incentives for conservation for the area's 
residents. 
Ecotourism promises such an incentive, 
  
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APA Guaraquecaba 
  
Figure 1. Location of the environmental reserve 
(APA) of Guaraquecaba. 
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