Evaluation of landscape urbanity in Americana, são paulo, Brazil

The constant transformation of space comes as a result of established socio-environmental, economic and cultural relations. In order to understand the relationships between the patterns and processes in the landscape, considering or not the hierarchical organization, the development of methods for the quantification of their structure has been used. This study focuses on analyzing temporal dynamics of landscape and land cover in Americana (SP Brazil in 1994, 2008 and 2016) aiming to diagnose the landscape urbanity through the application of The Urbanity Index (UI). Geographic Information Systems (GIS) were used to map the use and land cover and to visualize the UI. The UIresults evidenced anincrease of the landscape urbanization over time, mainly due to the decrease of forestry in the municipality. The growth of anthropogenic activities and the loss of natural areas can compromise the biodiversity present in Americana, implying the loss of environmental functions and consequently the benefits they provide.