Assessment of the degree of reliability in the declarations of the rural environmental register relation to the SIGEF area certifications

Abstract

The Brazilian Forest Code was sanctioned in 2012, bringing forth a tool for analyzing rural properties known as the Rural Environmental Registry (CAR). This is a nationwide electronic public record mandatory for all rural properties. The registration tool has shown some discrepancies, particularly in the georeferencing section aimed at identifying land use, occupation, and perimeter information. This study aims to assess the divergences in information obtained through CAR due to different map insertion methods and to analyze the precision and accuracy of the methods. For each property, a map generated from Google Earth was produced in a KML file format. These maps were obtained through public consultation of the rural environmental registry provided by the Brazilian Institute of the Environment, comparing them against the orbital image contained therein for each method. The comparisons between methods were analyzed using simple correlation, categorized into four groups based on property size. The results obtained indicate that the registration quality is directly related to the quality of the georeferencing section within the CAR application. When combined with certification data, we obtain a more reliable declaration result.