IPT - CGeo - Artigos em Revistas Científicas
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- Communicating Science in the Natural Park of Serras D Aire and Candeeiros, First Steps in Science Communication in the HIGHLANDS.3 ProjectPublication . Silva, Julio; Santos, Luis; Lopes, VascoO turismo de natureza é uma das indústrias que mais cresceu no mundo desde o início do século. Este crescimento é raramente acompanhado pelos sistemas de gestão de áreas naturais que lutam contra o número crescente de turistas, falta de infraestruturas, informação e organização. Uma das soluções adotadas por muitas áreas naturais é a adoção de classificações adicionais, tais como reservas de biosfera, Ramsar, Natura 2000, entre muitas outras. Esta abordagem estratégica comprometeu a maior parte das estruturas de gestão aos esforços burocráticos, tornando difícil o processo de adaptação. As várias classificações, embora facilmente compreendidas, ficam aquém dos objetivos pretendidos, apresentando metodologias tradicionais, promoção ineficaz, baixo envolvimento local e estratégias de educação convencionais. O conhecimento académico e o profissionalismo audiovisual podem produzir materiais promocionais e de vídeo documental para uma vasta gama de públicos, fornecendo ferramentas de comunicação, educacionais e de desenvolvimento. A comunicação científica é uma poderosa ferramenta de gestão de áreas classificadas, a participação na gestão por entidades regionais, beneficia o envolvimento de municípios, instituições de ensino superior, organizações não governamentais e stakeholders, intervindo no desenvolvimento territorial sustentável, com responsabilidades na promoção, sensibilização e comunicação. Este estudo apresentará um vídeo introdutório exemplificador da estratégia de comunicação do Parque Natural das Serras D'Aire e Candeeiros, adaptável a outras áreas protegidas como estratégia de turismo. Conclui-se que a comunicação em áreas naturais classificadas deve ser regida pelo mesmo rigor e qualidade exigidos em ciência sem perder o interesse necessário pela sua comunicação efetiva e eficiente, para se obter turismo de qualidade.
- MDIR Monthly Ignition Risk Maps, an Integrated Open-Source Strategy for Wildfire PreventionPublication . Santos, Luis; Vasco Lopes; Baptista, CecíliaCountries unaccustomed to wildfires are currently experiencing wildfire as a new climate-change reality. Understanding how fire ignition and propagation are correlated with temperature, orography, humidity, wind, and the mixture and age of individual plants must be considered when designing prevention strategies. While wildfire prevention focuses on fire ignition avoidance, firefighting success depends on early ignition detection, meaning that, in either case, ignition plays a major role. The current case study considered three Portuguese municipalities that annually observe frequent fire ignitions (Tomar, Ourém, and Ferreira do Zêzere) as the testing ground for the Modernized Dynamic Ignition Risk (MDIR) strategy, thus evaluating the efficiency of MDIR and the efficacy of the variables used. This methodology uses geographic information systems technology sustained by open-source satellite imagery, along with the Habitat Risk Assessment model from the InVEST software package, as drivers for the MDIR application. The MDIR approach grants frequent update capabilities and fully open-sourced high ignition risk area identification, producing monthly ignition risk maps. The advantage of using this method is the ease of adaptation to any current monitoring strategy, awarding further efficiency and efficacy in reducing ignitions. The approach delivered adequate results in estimating ignitions for the three Portuguese municipalities, achieving, for several months, prediction accuracy percentages of over 70%. For the studied area, MDIR clearly identifies areas of high ignition risk and delivers an average of 62% success in predicting ignitions, thus showing potential for analyzing the impact of policy implementation and monitoring through the strategy design.
- Water resources and human behaviour: an integrated landscape management perspective.Publication . Oosterbeek, Luiz; Scheunemann, Inguelore; Santos, LuisA two sides balance can be drawn from the last 20 years of active intents to change local, regional and global policies concerning water and global environment issues. On one hand, as a consequence of the “sustainable development” model, there is an increasing awareness of the issues in stake, and environment became a core part of any public policy. International conferences and the investment in scientific research in these areas are an expression of this. Yet, concerns are growing in face of the increasing stress imposed on freshwater resources, climate change and the difficulties to achieve international consensus on specific strategies. This was the focus of discussion in the international conference on climate change organised in Nagoya in December 2010, by ICSS, ICSU and ICPHS. A revision of the conceptual approach to sustainable development, moving beyond a strictly socio-economic understanding of human behaviour and incorporating, as basic strategies, the dimensions of culture, didactics of dilemma and governance, is currently being applied in some scenarios, hopefully with a better result. The paper discusses water resources in the context of climate change from this integrated perspective.
- Water quality monitoring in the Paul do Boquilobo Biosphere ReservePublication . Baptista, C.; Santos, LuisThe Paul do Boquilobo is an important wetland ecosystem classified by Unesco as a MAB Biosphere reserve also awarded Ramsar site status, representing one of the most important habitats for the resident nesting colony of Cattle Egret (Bulbucus ibis). Yet owing to its location, it suffers from human induced impacts which include industrial and domestic effluent discharges as well as agricultural land use which have negatively impacted water quality. The current study reports the results obtained from the introductory monitoring programme of surface water quality in the Nature Reserve to emphasize the detrimental impact of the anthropogenic activities in the water quality of such an important ecosystem. The study involved physicochemical and biotic variables, microbial parameters and biological indicators. Results after 3 years of monitoring bring to evidence a poor water quality further impaired by seasonal patterns. Statistical analysis of data attributed water quality variation to 3 main parameters – pH, dissolved oxygen and nitrates, indicating heavy contamination loads from both organic and agricultural sources. Seasonality plays a role in water flow and climatic conditions, where sampling sites presented variable water quality data, suggesting a depurative function of the wetland.
- Tourism in nature reserves and peripheral rural areas: Issues and strategiesPublication . Santos, Luis; Anastácio, Rita Ferreira; Monteiro, PaulinoThe delicate balance between human occupation and conservation policy is a concurrent conflict of historical, economic and cultural nature. Societal reasoning is a clear-cut understanding that the implementation of conservation policy brings loss, while this is a comfortable situation for conservationists, it brings serious consequences to communities. In such places the decreasing investment along with the loss of the main economic local activities, eventually causes demographic decline, which, in turn, results in aging of the population, culminating in a critical situation with no innovation and poor exchange between socio-economic actors. In a context of worldwide tourism sector expansion and development, tourism sustainability performance of such regions or countries becomes an important goal of strategic planning to ensure an appropriate balance between present and future opportunities. Bearing in mind that peripheral areas have usually been characterized by a low level of autonomy in planning capability, with poor access to and from markets, not included in travel itineraries except from a small portion of independent tourists. The current paper analyses two different case studies, the first in the small fishing village of the Cape Verde´s Archipelago, Santo Antão Island where the peripheral community of Monte Trigo was surveyed to understand the impact of the solar electricity facility implementation, along with their views on development. Being Tourism one of the most cited options, it is important to evaluate the risks and different types of tourism. The second case study involves the Natural Park of Serras D’aire and Candeeiros (PNSAC), using Census data and Geographical Information Systems analyzed the impact of conservation legislation on the demographic evolution of communities inside the Park. Results brought to evidence the abandonment of traditional economic activities, thus promoting a different trend of demographic development in peripherical Park regions. Despite the geographical distance and Ecological differences between Coastal Islands and mountainous continental interior, both case studies share and represent both weak and strong tourism sustainability paradigms. Moreover, the core sustainability performance of the studied regions is comparable, which can serve as a starting point that stimulates public and private debate, thus promoting improvement actions to achieve tourism sustainability.
- Prehistoric occupation and palaeoenvironmental changes along Santa Catarina's Coastal Plain, Brazil: An integrated approach based on palynological dataPublication . Val-Peón, Cristina; Cancelli, Rodrigo R.; Santos, Luis; Soares, André L.R.Climate change and sea level variation during the Quaternary shaped the southernmost Santa Catarina's Coastal Plain and its landscape, promoting vegetation changes and different geomorphological features that resulted in the formation of sand barriers, relocation of fluvial channels, lagoons and rivers. In this context, prehistoric occupation of the territory took place through different migratory events over the Holocene. This study presents a palaeoenvironmental reconstruction of the last 8000 years BP, based on pollen analysis from the core collected in Campo Mãe Luzia natural deposit (Araranguá municipality, SC, Brazil). The palynological, sedimentary, chronological and altimetric records were integrated with a revision of the archaeological data, allowing for the contextualization of the different groups within each environmental phase. Three distinct palaeoenvironmental phases are suggested for the last 8000 years BP: Phase I, characterized as an estuarine-lagoon environment, with no reports of human occupation; Phase II, a transition between the lagoon environment and the gradual formation of a coastal swamp, followed by an expansion of the sandy coastal barrier; Phase III, characterized by Atlantic rain forest development and their colonization. Human occupation was registered in the last two phases, with settlements of hunter-gatherer groups, sambaquis builders, and Meridional Jê and Guarani groups.
- Modelling past, present and future Ecosystem Services supply in a protected floodplain under land use and climate changesPublication . Gaglio, M.; Aschonitis, V.; Pieretti, L.; Santos, Luis; Gissi, E.; Castaldelli, G.; Fano, E.A.The understanding of protection initiatives’ effects on the delivery of Ecosystem Services (ESs) is of paramount importance to attain sustainable management in Protected Areas (PAs). Protected floodplains provide important ESs to local populations such as water flow regulation and climate regulation through carbon storage. This study investigates the effects of biodiversity protection initiatives (i.e. declaration of Protected Areas – PAs) and the related spatio-temporal land use/land cover (LULC) changes on ecosystem services (ESs) in the Nature Reserve of Paul do Boquilobo – NRPB (Central Portugal). Special focus was made on climate mitigation (i.e. carbon storage and sequestration) and water-related (flood mitigation, water regulation and supply) ESs. The analysis was performed using InVEST model. Three dates of past LULC conditions were considered in the analysis (1967, 1990 and 2015). Moreover, two future alternative LULC scenarios for 2050 were designed (a “Business”- BUS and a “Naturalization”- NAT scenario). The BUS scenario considers a LULC distribution towards high productive agricultural systems, considering only a restricted central core of natural areas, while the NAT scenario considers full coverage of natural areas. The two future extreme LULC scenarios were analyzed considering both no climate change and climate change effects on water-related services based on the pessimistic rcp8.5 climatic scenario. The results showed that PA declaration of NRPB after 1980 increased carbon storage-sequestration and flood mitigation (higher water storage, lower recharge and runoff). The analysis of future LULC scenarios demonstrated that the complete renaturing in combination with climate change (reduction of precipitation, increase of temperature) may lead to severe reduction of recharge and runoff. These results indicate that conflicts may appear between specific water regulation services by the application of PA initiatives in places where groundwater resources are limited or minimum ecological flows in surface waters are difficult to be preserved.
- Modernized Forest Fire Risk Assessment Model Based on the Case Study of three Portuguese Municipalities Frequently Affected by Forest FiresPublication . Santos, Luis; Lopes, Vasco; Baptista, CecíliaThe number of forest fires ignitions has decreased worldwide, thus observing increased levels of intensity and destruction, endangering urban areas and causing material damages and deaths (Portugal, 2017). Forest fire hazard mapping supported by the surveillance strategy targeted at very susceptible areas with high losses potential are the common tools of fire prevention. Each municipality creates its own Forest Fire Hazard Map, and so it is observed that along the administrative boundaries, discrepancies occur, even when identical types of land use are in place. The evolution of geographic information systems technology sustained by the open-source satellite imagery, along with the innovative Habitat Risk Assessment model of the InVEST software, allowed the creation of an easily applicable trans-administrative boundary fire hazard map, with frequent update capabilities and fully open source. This work considered three municipalities (Tomar, Ourém, and Ferreira do Zêzere) that annually observe various forest fire occurrences. Results enabled the creation of a homogeneous Forest Fire Risk Map, using landuse, slope, road access network, fire ignitions’ history, visualization basins, and the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) as variables. All variables correlate with each other using different weights, in which the different classes of land use are considered as habitats and the remaining variables as fire hazard stressors. The results produce a coherent monthly updated Risk Map, which is an alternative to many risk assessment systems used worldwide.