Water Resources GIS System Applied to an Urban Watershed

This study is based on the application of geoprocessing techniques to a drainage basin undergoing urbanization (Córrego do Mineirinho basin in São Carlos, Brazil) with the objective of characterizing the physical and human aspects of the watershed, especially land use and occupation. In order to generate land use and occupation scenarios, CBERS and QUICKBIRD satellite images were used and submitted to supervised and automatic classification, and the results compared. From the collected data, scenarios were elaborated based on a manual vectorial editing to produce detailed land use and occupation maps. To define the future scenario, the City Master Plan guidelines were considered. These maps were compared, and the changes in permeable areas in the basin were analyzed. Evaluation of soil permeability from the scenarios demonstrated a significant increase in impermeable areas.