Rualdo Menegat

Participatory democracy and sustainable development: integrated urban environmental management in Porto Alegre, Brazil:

Porto Alegre is well known for its innovative social policies but less so for the environmental policies that are this paper’s focus. The paper begins by describing the city’s participatory budgeting system and the multiple interconnections it has with a wide-ranging environmental policy. Porto Alegre has the highest standard of living and the highest life expectancy of any Brazilian metropolitan centre. Virtually all its people have water piped to their homes and most have good-quality sanitation and drainage. The garbage collection system reaches virtually all households and has included a separate collection of recyclables since 1990; other programmes enforce industrial pollution control (including special provision in garages and petrol stations), keep down polluting motor vehicle emissions and ensure the re-utilization of organic wastes from parks and restaurants. The city has 14 square metres of green space per person and a million trees along its streets. This paper also describes the education and environmental information programme that underpins these policies, including changes to school curricula and the Environmental Atlas of Porto Alegre that provides the base information for environmental policy, environmental discussion and environmental education. The paper ends by discussing how sustainable development is impossible without good urban environmental management and how this, in turn, has to be built on democracy and participation.

The Botrychiopsis genus and its biostratigraphic implications in Southern Paraná Basin

Botrychiopsis has been considered an important floristic element of Westphalian/Artinskian associations of the Paraná Basin. The occurrence of Botrychiopsis in roof-shales of the Rio Bonito Formation in Southern Paraná Basin (Quitéria area), supported by the identification of Botrychiopsis valida, enlarges the genus biochron. Consequently, the stratigraphic hierarchy for Botrychiopsis plantiana and Botrychiopsis valida was defined for the Paraná Basin. Although it is climatically controlled and related to a deglaciation icehouse stage, stratigraphic distribution of the genus presents a substantial climate tolerance, from cold/cool to warm/temperate conditions. A new phytostratigraphic zonation is proposed for the southern portion of the basin that includes the Botrychiopsis Zone (Asselian/Kungurian), which is subdivided into the Botrychiopsis plantiana (Asselian/Artinskian) and Botrychiopsis valida (Late Artinskian/Kungurian) subzones.

A MIDDLE PERMIAN (ROADIAN) LUNGFISH AESTIVATION BURROW FROM THE RIO DO RASTO FORMATION (PARANÁ BASIN, BRAZIL) AND ASSOCIATED U-Pb DATING

Abstract The Permian Rio do Rasto Formation (Paraná Basin) crops out in southern Brazil and was deposited under fluvio-lacustrine settings. A singular outcrop located in the Aceguá municipality (Rio Grande do Sul State) represents a sequence of three distinct levels of paleosols in which rhizoliths and a single vertebrate burrow were recovered. The latter has a sub-vertical orientation, a slightly curved shape and a gross morphology and simple architecture that are consistent with aestivation burrows produced by lungfishes. The occurrence of this structure, in association with the features of the paleosols, indicates a seasonal climate with drought events. Additionally, a tonstein layer is interbedded in the paleosol sequence, indicating the influence of volcanic ash falls in the paleoenvironment. Zircons were collected from this level and dated using U-Pb techniques and the obtained age is 270.61 +1.76/-3.27 Ma (Roadian). The paleoenvironmental context of this outcrop is in accordance with a dry, seasonal climate of southwestern Pangaea during the early Guadalupian.

Gigantic Cities and the New Challenge of an Old Science: Geoethics, Geoeducation, and Geoknowledge in Porto Alegre, Brazil

In the present time, we are facing new challenges that require us to review the role of Geology to the material, cognitive and ethic progress of humankind. The vertiginous population growth, urban sprawl, increasing demand for solid, liquid, and gaseous geosphere, the collapse of the ecosystems that support life and the climate change replace Geology as one of the most important contemporary sciences. We need to review procedures, analytical scales and contribute to civilization process. Essentially, we need Geology help develop a deep Geoethic on the use of land resources, care with the geosphere, and mankind sustainability. The Geoethic emerges as a new understanding that cleaves across all geological activities, whether of scientific practice, or the practice of exploitation of natural resources, and or also the knowledge of how geodynamics affects cities and human activities and vice versa. At the root of contemporary environmental and urban problems, whether planetary or local is how the city is perceived by its inhabitants, managers, and intelligentsia. The ascent of urban realm in the next 30 years is expected to almost duplicate the nowadays 3.6 billion inhabitants. The central challenge for the geology and Geoethics is to consider the many problems due to the complex relations between the large urban needs and geolandscape transformations. The main goal of this chapter is to describe the ascent of cities’ scales—from city and megacity to megalopolis and ecumenopolis—in order to describe connections between the physical world-city and the superficial components of the Earth systems. The techno-urbansphere is defined as the urban physical totality, which includes the man-made system and the lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere’s portions transformed by it. Due to geologic scale of the techno-urbansphere, it is not possible to observe it by a citizen without technical and Earth science concepts and instruments. To offer to citizens and decisions makers accurate instruments to understand the nowadays urban geocomplexities, thematic surveys of the urban physical totality are very important. This possibility is illustrated by the Environmental Atlas of Porto Alegre case, which triggered new looks in urban environmental management, geoethics and geoeducation in Porto Alegre city, Southern Brazil.