STUDY OF URBAN GROWTH OF A SMALL AMAZON CITY: A METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH

Urban spatial transformations that have occurred in small, medium and large cities of the Amazon Region have been quite significant since the 1970s. Most of these cities (over 80 %) are considered small urban areas, with less than 20 thousand inhabitants, with poor infrastructure, and most of them are dependent on public and forest resources. This paper discusses a methodology of mapping of the land use and land cover of a part of Barcarena municipality, using unsupervised classification technique of remote sensing LANDSAT images, obtained between 1984 and 2010. During this period, there was a deforestation of 43.7 km(2) (27 %) and the urban area grew 26.7 km(2) (334 %). The mapping of the land use of Barcarena municipality made possible to verify the existence of two distinct urban realities, the administrative city of Barcarena, and the District of Cabanos.