CURRENT FLORISTIC KNOWLEDGE AND EARTH USE ASSESSMENT IN EPA BONFIM-GUARAÍRAS, RIO GRANDE DO NORTE
Atlantic Forest, Checklist, data cleaning, Environmental Protection Area.
The Atlantic Forest biome has suffered in recent years with degradation, due to the increase of anthropic activities, which lead to the main problems of forest remnants, which are the fragmentation, hindering the floristic studies and conservation itself. This thesis aims to associate spatial data, using the Geographic Information System (GIS), with floristic data within the Atlantic Forest of Rio Grande do Norte (RN). The study area selected is the Bonfim-Guaraíras Environmental Protection Area (EPA), included in the eastern portion of the RN within the Atlantic Forest domain. We assessed the levels of sampling effort, percentages of remaining forests, and indicated the priority areas for research and conservation within the EPA. We created a georeferenced database of the angiosperm records from some herbariums as ASE, CESJ, HUCS, HUEFS, JPB, JBRJ and UFRN that are available in online platforms (JABOT and SpeciesLink) totaling 2029 records. The first step of this work was performed with the data cleaning to the collected records. After the data cleaning, we had a reduction in the total number of records to 966. The most expressive results of this step are available in chapter 1 of this dissertation. A checklist was created for all the species present at EPA Bonfim-Guaraíra with the georeferenced database. In the checklist are listed 387 species distributed across 269 genera and 86 families. The most abundant family was the Fabaceae of the Rosideae clade with about 51 registered species. In contrast, the genus with the largest records was Cyperus of the Cyperaceae family. Only one species was identified as endemic to the EPA - Eugenia pipensis, and only two with a vulnerable status on the threatened lists: Melocactus violaceus and Cyperus articulatus. It was confirmed that the two municipalities Nisia Floresta and Tibau do Sul are the most abundant in species, which indicates there is a need for collection in other municipalities of ABG, to better know their flora and the situation for their species. Collection bias is also discussed.