Erosive dynamics in areas occupied by millennia-old human actions and their perspectives for sectors of recent occupation

• Grant number: 25/03596-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Post-doctor
• Start date: July 04, 2025
• End date: October 03, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Geography
• Principal Investigator: Archimedes Perez Filho
• Grantee: Estêvão Botura Stefanuto
• Supervisor: Maria Estela Nadal Romero
• Host Institution: Instituto de Geociências (IG). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Instituto Pirenaico De Ecología, Zaragoza, Spain
• Associated to the scholarship: 24/00296-1 - Evolution of the cuesta relief: in search of the erosive dynamics before and after human occupation, BP.PD

Abstract

How do erosion dynamics occur in areas occupied by human activities for hundreds or thousands of years? How can the analysis of these systems help in the development of predictive scenarios for sectors with more recent occupation? These are questions that arose during the development of the national research project, and that the current internship research project abroad aims to find answers to by analyzing the middle course of the Ebro River, located in northeastern Spain. The middle course of the Ebro River presents periods of human occupation, abandonment and/or resumption of occupation, with the oldest records dating back to 4955-4655 years BP. In this sense, the objective is to analyze erosion rates in sectors of ancient human occupation in the middle course of the Ebro River, aiming to diagnose periods of higher or lower sedimentation rates and their relationship with the dynamics of land use. To this end, geochronology techniques such as Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) dating and Pb210 dating are used, using secondary paleogeographic, geoarchaeological and/or limnological data to organize the paleoenvironmental recomposition. In this way, it is expected to calibrate variables that allow projections on the erosion dynamics in the study area in Brazil, which has significantly more recent human occupation.