SOCIO-ENVIRONMENTAL EROSION AND VULNERABILITY IN THE CERRADO - MIDWEST REGION

• Grant number: 22/12891-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: June 01, 2023
• End date: October 31, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Geography - Human Geography
• Principal Investigator: Selma Simões de Castro
• Grantee: Kassio Samay Ribeiro Tavares
• Host Institution: Instituto de Geociências (IG). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Environmental sustainability is understood here as the one that, by integrating the variables of the physical and biotic environment with the socioeconomic variables of a given area, indicates whether there is well-being or socio-environmental vulnerability. Unsustainability can be caused by environmental impacts and dynamics resulting from inadequate land use and management, among which is linear water erosion (ravines and gullies), especially medium and large, in susceptible areas, as detected in several areas of the Midwest region of the country, whose central south portion was the object of the expansion of the Agricultural Frontier, in the middle of the last century. Previous studies, mainly at local scales, indicate that erosion results from hydropedological imbalances in naturally susceptible areas, converted into extensive pastures and/or annual crops, called critical areas. The fact is that the spatial distribution of erosive foci and critical areas, which concentrate a greater number of foci, and their degrees of criticality are not satisfactorily known, nor their influence on socio-environmental vulnerability. This project continues these recent studies on linear erosion in the state of Goiás and in Mineiros (GO), at the local scale, with the objective of building a model of socio-environmental vulnerability, based on physical-based models and Use Functions of the Lands (UFLs), is synthesizing the most relevant aspects of the environmental, economic and social dimensions of sustainability. A multiscale approach will be adopted, with the aid of geocartographic and geostatistical techniques, based on remote sensing and geoprocessing and field validation, complemented by the evaluation of secondary socioeconomic data and their respective integration. It should be noted that there are several models available to assess socio-environmental vulnerability, often socio-economic, however, based on physical-based models correlated to FUTs, they constitute an innovative and original approach to socio-environmental vulnerability, and can greatly help in understanding the phenomenon, its spatialization and causes and, consequently, in decision-making based on reliable indicators aimed at environmental sustainability in the region.