URBAN FORESTS: CHARACTERIZATION AND METHODS OF QUANTIFICATION OF URBAN AFFORESTATION
environmental quality, green areas, image processing, metadata
Trees play an important role in improving the environmental and living quality of urban populations by their ecological, economic, aesthetic and recreational functions. These functions are affect thermal comfort, the balance of the hydrological cycle, the mitigation of noise, visual and air pollution, the breakdown of the artificiality of the urban environment, among others benefits. In this context, this thesis aims to characterize the afforestation of urban areas in the cities of the State of Rio Grande do Norte (RN) and to test methods for quantification of green areas. We will use to characterize the urban afforestation the correlation of metadata from all cities of the RN from the IBGE’s statistics census. In addition, we will do the correlation and comparison of the socioeconomic data, such as violence statistics from Secretariat of Security of the state of Rio Grande, due to several surveys indicating a clear relationship between lower rates of green areas and higher rates of disease, including depression, and violence. For the statistical tests it was necessary to check the behavior of all the data regarding its normality, using the analysis of the main components, then the data that presented normality were separated and the covariance matrices and factorial analysis were done, all in the Core R Team (2018). Soon after data analysis, two municipalities were chosen (high homicide rate per 100,000 inhabitants and low afforestation of public roads; low homicide rate per 100,000 inhabitants and high afforestation of public roads) in each mesoregion of the state of RN. We compared the geoprocessing of images with the afforestation census data. Our partial results indicate a correlation for the variables: afforestation of public roads, hospitalizations for diarrhea at the East, Agreste, Central and West Potiguar regions of the State of RN. Moreover, the Central, West and East Potiguar regions presented an inversely proportional rate of homicide and afforestation rates of public roads. That is, the greater the afforestation of public roads in these regions the lower the homicide rates. And the municipalities that had a higher homicide rate had less afforestation of public roads for the Central, West and East Potiguar regions were Currais Novos, Caraúbas and São Gonçalo do Amarante, are placed, respectively.