Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This study examines how land-use changes in the Ribeirão Itaim watershed, in Taubaté, São Paulo, between 1995 and 2024, reconfigured the hydrosocial landscape and generated important implications for water security and spatial planning at both municipal and metropolitan scales. The analysis brings together perspectives from urban hydrology, the hydrosocial cycle, the political ecology of water, watershed governance, and Sustainable Development Goals 6, 11, and 13. Methodologically, MapBiomas data were integrated with a normative analysis of the 2011 and 2017 Master Plans. Overlaying land-use and land-cover maps with municipal macrozones made it possible to build contingency matrices, allowing convergences and mismatches between actual land occupation and officially established zoning to be identified. The results show a decline in the agricultural land matrix, an increase in forest cover, and a marked expansion of non-vegetated areas associated with the inland spread of urbanization. At the same time, the 2017 Master Plan intensifies the allocation of broad sectors to urban uses, including the conversion of rural areas into Urban Expansion Zones, with significant hydrological and environmental consequences. These findings highlight the need for planning guided by the watershed logic, including the review of expansion zones located on low-infiltration soils and stronger integration between land-use planning, urban drainage, and ecosystem services.
Source: Revista Espaço e Geografia
Language: English
Subfield: Global and Planetary Change
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7204114632