Analysis of cultivation of remaining forest fragments in the Moju River Basin, Legal Amazon, Pará

It is known that Brazilian Amazon has been the target of changes in land use and cover caused by oil palm crop. Among other economically attractive species, they cause several impacts on the environment. One way to characterize environmental changes that have an influence on biodiversity conservation is the analysis of landscape metrics. The objective of this work was to characterize and to analyze, through landscape metrics, the remaining forest fragments in a landscape with palm oil cultivation, in the Moju River Hydrographic Basin under the perspective of the conservation of local biodiversity, making a comparative between the years of 2005 and 2017. The landscape analyzed is very fragmented, characterized by the presence of a large number of small fragments, demonstrating the strong impact of human activity in the area. The environmental compromise of the Moju River basin’s landscape with respect to ecological integrity has become notorious, since over 50% of its dense vegetation area with up to 50 ha is composed of edge environment, a factor that significantly affects the quality of the existing ecosystems. Considering the context of the Moju River basin, strategic planning measures related to the control and management of the Moju River are necessary to contribute to the process of recovery and conservation of the remaining fragments.