PROJETO RADAMBRASIL

The map of Potential Land Use, made with data taken
from maps and documents prepared by the other Departments
of the RADAMBRASIL Project, provides an
evaluation of the natural capacity for land utilization. It
also provides indications of prospective areas for the
occurrence of minerals and rocks of economic interest,
including those which have already been proven.
This evaluation aims at identifying areas suitable either for
the establishment or the improvement of cattle raising,
lumbering, agricultural, and plant extractive activities, and
is characterized by the possibility of economic utilization
of the area covered by the Project. In this evaluation,
important roles are played by the principles of nature
conservation and the minimization of the effects of ecological
unbalances, as well as the organization or reorganization
of the economic space.
The methodology employed was based on the joint utilization
of geomorphological, soil, geological, and phytoecological
maps, the study of radar imagery, and field checking,
according to the following stages:
— establishment of homogeneous units;
— attribution of weights, ranging from zero (0) to one (1),
to the factors obtained from the thematic maps for the
agricultural and cattle raising activities;
— computation of indices of natural capacity by using a
combinatory probabilistic criterion of the weights, with
the index one representing the optimum condition for
all factors under consideration;
— classification of the lumbering and plant extractive
activities according to the volumetric measurements
obtained through the forest inventories made by the
342 USO POTENCIAL DA TERRA
ABSTRACT
Vegetation Department, including the occurrence of
species and also production;
— establishment of the five classes of natural capacity:
HIGH, MEDIUM, LOW, VERY LOW, and NON-SIGNIFI­
CANT, based on the indices obtained.
t was ascertained in this area the existence of thi-ty-eight
(38) combinations of activities, which present the following
possibilities of occurrence:
— Lumber exploitation: in the evaluation of this activity it
was evinced the occurrence of the five (5) classes.
HIGH class outstands all the others and occurs with
high indices, comprising about 70% of the mapped
area.
— Farming and cattle raising in planted pasture: their
capacity ranges from LOW to NON-SIGNIFICANT and
corresponds to a total of 52.3% of the mapped area.
— Cattle raising in natural pasture: The classes VERY
LOW, LOW, and MEDIUM comprise only 5.6% of the
total area and its occurrence is limited to the northeastern
section of the area (Tiriós Savanna) and also to the
northwestern section, which is a continuation of the
"Rio Branco Fields".
— Plant extractive activities: Brazil nuts and non-elastic
latex (balata and macaranduba) are the products which
present the highest potentialities in this kind of activity,
which is present in all classes of evaluation.
Aiming at the ecological protection, suggestions were
made for the establishment of the Trombetas National
Forest, the Mapaoni River Biological Reservation, and the
Poana River Ecological Station, as well as the National
Parks of the Caracaranä Lake and of the Pacaraima Range,
and the Roraima Mountain Ecological Station.