GEOMORPHOLOGICAL CONSTRAINTS AND LAND USE DYNAMICS IN A BRAZILIAN CERRADO PROTECTED AREA: RIO PANDEIROS ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AREA

Abstract

This study aims to analyze the influence of geomorphological units on land use and land cover changes within the Environmental Protection Area of Rio Pandeiros basin, located in northern Minas Gerais, Brazil, in the years 1985, 2000, 2010, and 2024. The present research stems from the need to understand how relief conditions the dynamics of land occupation in protected areas within the Cerrado biome. The methodological approach integrated geomorphological mapping based on morphometric variables derived from the SRTM Digital Elevation Model (DEM) and supervised classification of Landsat imagery using the Random Forest algorithm, and incorporating spectral and topographic covariates. The results indicated high model performance, with strong classification accuracy across all years analyzed. It was observed that anthropogenic transformations were predominantly concentrated in flat relief areas, especially in structural bencheslateau, where pasture emerged as the main anthropogenic class, increasing from 22.99% of the area in 1985 to 26.92% in 2024. In contrast, more dissected compartments showed greater conservation of native vegetation. The findings suggest that geomorphology plays a determining role in the spatial organization of land uses, constituting an essential variable for territorial planning and management in conservation units.