O processo de expansão urbana e seus impactos na Estação Ecológica de Ribeirão Preto, SP

Abstract

Although the normative instruments of urban planning include the environmental impact assessment, there is a loosening of these laws due to public and private interests that have purposes contrary to environmental policies. In the municipality of Ribeirão Preto, coffee and sugarcane monocultures have contributed to the fragmentation of native vegetation, reducing it to 6% of the municipal area (4,200 ha). The Ecological Station of Ribeirão Preto (ESRP) is the larger native remnant (155 ha) and suffers pressures for being located in the urban environment. This work investigated the urban pressure in the Buffer Zone (BZ) and its relation to the changes in the  Master Plan (MP) and complementary laws.  The land cover maps  (2010 and 2017) were also analyzed in order to quantify the conversion of native forests to anthropic uses, showing an intense urban expansion in the BZ over the period analyzed. On the other hand, municipal urban environmental legislation has evolved seeing that the previous MP (dated from 1995) approached the environment in a very specific way, which was modified in the 2018 law, which attempts to integrate the urban zoning to the buffer zone in order to make land use compatible with the ESRP Management Plan.