USE OF SHORT RANGE SENSOR FOR TEMPORAL ANALYSIS OF VEGETATION COVER INDEX FOR AN EXPERIMENT CONSIDERING EROSION CONTROL WITH VERTIVER PLANT ASSOCIATED WITH BIODEGRADABLE GEOMESHES

Erosion is the factor that most degrades the soil in the metropolitan area of the city of Maceio, Alagoas Brazil. Due to erosion and the irregular occupation of hillsides, the risk of landslides over populated areas is a constant problem. There is a large quantity of people living in risky irregular areas and it has shown to be more of a social problem than an engineering problem. Since people refuses to leave those areas, an extension project from the Surveying Engineering department of the Center of Agrarian Sciences seeks to develop a method to reduce the risk on those areas by restoring slopes vegetation reducing erosion processes. Approaching this problem, an experiment test was set to evaluate the efficiency of a method that uses Vetiver plants (Chrysopogon zizanioides) to control erosion under extreme conditions, such as declivities between 45% to 500% while giving the slope no previous treatment or geometry correction. This article seeks to describe the methodology used to evaluate the development of the vegetation over time by using close range sensor and photointerpretation techniques. The method has been successfully applied and the cover area has doubled between the first and last image surveys, which means good results from the experiment.