LANDSCAPE CONNECTIVITY AND THE DISTRIBUTION OF ALLUVIAL PLAINS IN SEMIARID ENVIRONMENT

The water and sediment transport matter through the landscape constitutes an essential aspect for understanding environmental dynamics. In this regard, it is paramount the development of researches that seeks the application of analysis methodologies to understand the dynamics of material transfer along drainage systems, pursuing applicable proposals to environmental and water resources management in an integrated manner. Among these there is the landscape connectivity approach, seen as the ability to transmit energy and matter throughout the landscape compartments. Along these lines, this paper aims to identify the dynamic relationships between landscape connectivity in semiarid environment and the distribution of different river typologies, based on the analysis of alluvial planers. This type of research is still important, because in the context of water scarcity to supply rural communities, the diffuse construction of busses along ephemeral canals was carried out to store rainwater. These buses are impediments to the free circulation of energy and matter in the landscape, resulting in the storage of sediments that contributes to the development of alluvial planers upstream. The research was conducted in the Riacho Grande basin, located in the semiarid state of Pernambuco, between the municipalities of Serra Talhada, Calumbi and Flores. The applied methodology was based on the construction of a detailed geomorphological mapping, integrated to land use and land cover, aiming to establish the relationships between the morphological units and the distribution of river disconnection elements; whether they are of natural origin or anthropically conditioned. The fluvial typology of the semiarid fluvial basin under analysis is primarily influenced by the disconnection elements, which reflect both structural and anthropogenic controls, mainly for the longitudinal connections, due to the high distribution of dams in the basin, which result in the accumulation of anthropogenic alluvial planers.