Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

We analyzed the change in vegetation and land use between 1995 and 2017 in 8 ejidos of the Sierra de Huautla Biosphere Reserve (REBIOSH) that have Management Units for Wildlife Conservation (UMA). From photographs and satellite images, we generated land use maps through the classification and supervised digitization of eight categories for each date and ejido. Subsequently, by superimposing the maps we evaluated the net and percentage changes of the categories. We found that the area of low deciduous forest (SBC) increased 6.1% (1,679 ha). This increase was mainly due to the transformation of disturbed SBC and its conversion to SBC. Those ejidos totally immersed in REBIOSH had a greater increase in SBC, compared to those ejidos partially immersed in the Reserve. The ejidos with UMAs operating for a longer time received more institutional support and showed a greater increase of the forest area of SBC than those UMAs that were more recently registered and have received less economical support. We consider that the operation of UMAs (which implies habitat management) can be a determining factor to stop the deterioration of natural vegetation in addition to the formal protection of REBIOSH.

The assumption that all periurban areas are equal leads to mistakes in MM-policies. This cross-sectional study used a quantitative, multi-scale approach to analyze the role of mobility in periurban areas of Cuenca, Ecuador. The travel behavior of the periurban population was based on a survey of 1158 households in which four study areas were analyzed and compared using seven mobility parameters. At the macro level, the typologies of periurban areas were identified according to access to the bus service, using the partitioning algorithm around medoids. The information analyzed shows that 72.5% of the periurban population works and studies in the city. It highlights the diversity of mobility patterns of periurban residents and defines three territorial typologies in this area.

The decrease in air quality is due to emissions from anthropogenic activities, mainly related to transport and industry, including the use of private vehicles and public transport, in addition to the generation of energy (derived from oil), burning of biomass for heating, forest fires, and agricultural activity. Another case of emission is the protests that occurred during the last quarter of 2019 in Ecuador, Chile, Colombia, which were characterized by the incineration of tires and different types of combustible material. This work focuses on evaluating the influence of social protests in the capital cities of these countries, processing data with the monitoring stations that each city has and considering the air quality indices (PM10, PM2.5, CO, NO2, O3 and SO2) using the Kriging geostatistical method, verifying the influence of the protests on air quality.

Las Soluciones de base Natural (SbN) permiten enfrentar desafíos y riesgos socioambientales mediante la protección, restauración y gestión sostenible de los ecosistemas, proporcionando bienestar humano e incrementando la biodiversidad. En la última década, la ecorregión mediterránea de Chile (EMC, 29-37ºS) ha experimentado una continua sequía y numerosos conflictos hídricos asociados al desarrollo de actividades industriales emplazadas en zonas que proveen servicios ecosistémicos de aprovisionamiento y regulación hídrica. En este estudio evaluamos el uso de SbN en conflictos de escasez hídrica en la EMC como forma de sustentar el diseño de políticas públicas que incorporen esta aproximación. Para esto, recopilamos conflictos asociados a la escasez hídrica en la EMC y se identificaron SbN para enfrentar conflictos similares en otras regiones del mundo. Se determinaron tres categorías de SbN: (i) restauración de cuencas, (ii) infraestructura verde y ancestral y (iii) prácticas agrícolas integradas. Nuestro análisis indica que el uso simultáneo de estas tres estrategias puede contribuir a la solución de conflictos hídricos en la EMC. Las SbN se proyectan como una opción eficiente para mejorar la disponibilidad hídrica, las que deben ser consideradas dentro de las políticas nacionales y diseñarse según las condiciones ambientales y contexto social de cada sector en conflicto.

The cultural and aesthetical connection of coastal communities with the environment results in typical landscapes that have been despised by the cultural globalized scenario. This indicates the importance of the protection of local groups’ identity. A study was applied to a fishing village in Pelotas, RS, aiming to comprehend the cultural and aesthetical features of the local landscape and to discuss strategies for integrating cultural biases to Planning and Urban Design practice. In this way, multiple theoretical and methodological approaches were applied: subjective analysis (ethnographical and narrative ones) and objective (visual, typological and chromatic ones). The results pointed out the main cultural and aesthetical attributes of the landscape and allowed a broad discussion on Planning and Urban Design strategies as well as a good adequacy to the local specificities.

In this paper we have mapped the time in which the continental shelf of the Atlantic coast of Andalusia (Spain) and Algarve (Portugal) has been emerged during the last glaciation, using a digital elevation model and a sea level model developed from the heights of twelve subperiods that encompass the entire glaciation. Since the Gulf of Cádiz coast has a wide continental shelf, the emerged surface during the glaciation was greater than at present, being its size dependent on the position of the sea level. Additionally, the last glaciation sea level model is compared with another simplified model based on two sub-periods, one of almost 100,000 years, of sea level decline, and another of about 12,000 years, of sea level rise. The results show that broad sectors of the continental shelf remained emerged for long periods of time, and that the methodological proposal made is significantly more accurate than any other approach, including that of the proposed simplified model.

Urban wetlands are supplied by the rainwater system and store large amounts of water for their vegetation and hydromorphic soils, while contributing to the regulation of flows in cities, however, they have been affected by urbanization processes. As is the case of the Bogotá wetlands, which are invaded by illegal settlements affecting environmental preservation areas, so studies are required to analyze: urban growth, and the trend of rainfall. The urbanization analysis techniques are calculated from the Normalized Built Difference Index (NDBI), which integrates the combination of satellite images for its determination. The rainwater trend is analyzed from the IDF curves (intensity-duration-frequency). The results show that the wetlands are invaded on average by 7.5% in the city. With regard to the intensity of rainwater, it is mainly concentrated in the eastern hills of Bogotá and due to the effects of runoff, the flow of water runs from east to west, reaching the main wetlands and lakes. Then the information is validated with the calculation of the Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI), which shows high concentrations of humidity in the western part of the city.

The coast of the Region of Murcia is a geographically favorable space for the generation of floods. In recent decades, this space has undergone a process of intensive urban occupation of flood prone areas, without proper planning. In this regard, it is appropriate to analyze the role of spatial planning in the management of flood risk through a precise delimitation of the areas exposed to hazard. In this paper, different geoprocesses are implemented on the basis of the cadastral cartography, to quantify the evolution and annual variability of the urban flood hazard exposure in the coast of the Region of Murcia (Southeast of Spain) between the year 1956 and 2014 The data obtained has been contextualized based on the legislative framework against floods, in order to evaluate the effectiveness of existing mitigation measures in this regard. The results show a significant increase in exposure to flood hazard in the study area. Another highlight is that the process of urban flood prone areas occupation is positively related to the economic situation. However, there is no clear relationship between the reduction of the urban flood hazard exposure and the implementation of legislative measures against floods.

This paper discusses the importance of geographic space in the context of generating a sample framework for surveys, questioning the traditional statistical premise of randomness and independence of the number of observations. The contribution of quantitative geography in the generation of regionalization methodologies is analyzed, since these allow the improvement of the sampling error of the surveys, focusing mainly on urban areas, and in the presence of stratification variables with spatial autocorrelation.Regionalization algorithms with and without heuristic optimization processes are empirically tested, using census data, to subsequently define the level of error and establish comparisons against traditional random and two-stage random sampling, using a Monte Carlo procedure.The results obtained show a decrease of up to 20% in error against traditional methodologies or alternatively, a reduction of up to 100 cases with the same level of error. It is concluded that spatialized sampling methodologies with heuristic optimization offer advantages in urban areas, in the presence of spatial autocorrelation.

Each migrant community in the process of territorial construction puts its cultural baggage in visibility as part of the deployment of strategies of symbolic appropriation. Religion is a component of the culture and identity of a community and is made visible through various manifestations of faith, expressed in a material and immaterial way. In this context, we propose to analyze how the multiple religious territorialities associated with the migrant communities of the town of Pedro Luro, in the Villarino party, province of Buenos Aires, Argentina, come into dispute. Specifically, we will focus on catholic devotions or cults, analyzing conflicts, agreements and / or tensions between the religiosity expressions of the Bolivian communities and the institutionalized or "traditional" expressions of the catholic Church, represented by the salesian congregation. From the cultural approach in Geography, the research is based on a qualitative methodology.