Lídia Sanches Bertolo

Practices and perceptions on water resource sustainability in ecovillages

In many areas of the world, groups of people have attempted to create urban landscapes that follow the principles of environmental sustainability. To this end, groups have devised alternative models, such as ecovillages, where low-impact handling is used and a way of life different from that of large population centers is adopted. Although these villages exist, their efficiency in the conservation of natural resources has not been effectively evaluated. This study evaluated the practices used by two Brazilian ecovillages to conserve water resources to assess whether this new concept of living is indeed successful in meeting sustainability goals. We selected 25 indicators of water sustainability, and using the compromise programming method, we quantified the distance between those landscapes self-referenced as sustainable and an ideal hypothetical scenario. We also interpreted the communities perceptions using the distance between the current situations and the envisioned scenario. We concluded that both ecovillage are far from technically ideal scenario, but the communities have a strong sense of their limitations in implementing water resources conservation. The communities attributed this fact primarily to deficiencies in the shared management.

Boundaries and mosaics: an approach to evaluate changes and to profit landscape planning, São Sebastião Island, SP/Brazil

This study assumed that the spatial identification of mosaics obtained by the analysis of interactions between frontiers over time would be a great strategy to obtain planning units, since the boundaries reveal the changes, heterogeneity and fluxes in a landscape. For this purpose, we selected 16 watersheds in Sao Sebastiao Island (Sao Paulo, BR), mapped the land use and cover (1962 and 2009) and built matrices of patches by boundaries. The analysis of these matrices using multivariate ordination and clustering allowed us to identify mosaics. The mosaics showed very well the temporal diversity of interactions across frontiers and the landscape conservation status, but had limitations to indicate management practices.

Indexes of spatio-temporal change to reconstruct the historical evolution of a coastal region: case study: São Sebastião Island - SP

As regioes costeiras brasileiras encontram-se altamente descaracterizadas devido ao intenso, diversificado e prolongado uso da terra ao longo de sua historia. O cenario hoje observado e produto do acumulo de interferencias que vem ocorrendo desde a colonizacao. Os planejamentos ambientais devem considerar essa questao, uma vez que as decisoes sobre o futuro dependem da compreensao dessas mudancas do passado. Neste caminho, o objetivo deste trabalho foi identificar, quantificar e indicar as variacoes espacos-temporais de uso da terra numa paisagem costeira a partir dos principios da ecologia de paisagem e da modelagem para construcao de cenarios. O estudo de caso foi a Ilha de Sao Sebastiao, Litoral Norte do Estado de Sao Paulo. Para tanto, foi desenvolvida e aplicada uma metodologia para a construcao da trajetoria historica por meio da identificacao de forcas indutoras e aplicacao de indices de mudancas que permitiram a definicao de fases de ocupacao da Ilha. Foram mapeadas nesse territorio cinco fases de ocupacao historica da paisagem costeira: preservacao, conservacao, regeneracao, exploracao e urbanizacao. Essas fases representam um padrao de heterogeneidade interna, ora como saldo positivo (conservacao ambiental), ora como saldo negativo (degradacao ambiental) dentro de 61 unidades de analise, definida pelas bacias hidrograficas presentes na Ilha.

Urban Landscape Change in the Brazilian Coastal Ecotone

The Brazilian coastal regions have been highly modified by intense, diversified and extensive use along its history. These changes were caused, m ore recently, by increasing urbanization and tourism. This study builds scenarios following landscape ecology concepts to interpret the changes and the impacts in the coastal ecotone of Sao Sebastiao Island (Sao Paul Brazil). In such a way, literature surveys of the coastal environment uses and occupation of the island throughout five centuries of occupation have been conducted. Changes in the last fourteen years were analyzed by interpreting and overlapping satellite images (GIS Idrisi Kilimanjaro). The methodology was adapted from Fujihara et al. (2005). The results showed that the largest percentages of human alterations in the island landscape were agriculture until the middle of 20th century, followed by urbanization under the 200m elevation. The forest has regenerated above the 200m level due to legal restrictions. These changes have occurred primarily in the last 70 years.