SATELLITE IMAGES AND GIS HELPING TO ESTABLISH CONSERVATION 
STRATEGIES TO THE "MICO-LEAO-CAIGARA" (Leontopithecus caissara) 
Marisa Dantas Bitencourt-Pereira 
Marcia G. Rodrigues 
Universidade de Sáo Paulo - USP 
Ecologia Geral - IB 
Rua do Matdo, Trav. 14, no. 321 
05508-900 - Sao Paulo - SP, Brazil 
ISPRS Commission VII / Working Group 5 
ABSTRACT 
The Leontopithecus caissara is an endemic specie that occur in restinga forest, transitional forest, and 
ombrophilous montane forest of the Atlantic coast (Martuscelli and Rodrigues, 1992). Recent studies 
have shown that this specie occupies those types of forests from zero to 200 metres of altitude. So few is 
know about that specie so far and it is already running the risk of being extinct by the human activity. For 
that reason a Conservation Area is being proposed at Ariri, Cananeia City, State of Säo Paulo. In order to 
guarantee the protection of that specie several studies took place and one of them regarding the type and 
the conditions of the vegetation (Rodrigues et alii, 1992). To easier further studies and o begin a bank of 
data a geocoded satellite images were merged with topography, drainage and useland after being 
transformed into a vegetation index image and classified according to the type of vegetation, using 
photointerpretation to help ground truth analyses. Afterwards, it was identified and overlayed with the set 
of data mentioned before, since the occurrence of those forest are closely related with altitude. With that 
procedure it is possible to establish the conditions of the vegetation at that time and create means to add 
any new information about the local o observation of the same specie as well as of other species, in order 
to study the relationships among individuals and species. 
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