CHARACTERIZATION OF THE RISCK AREAS IN PETRÓPOLIS - A CASE STUDY OF THE LOPES TROVÃO COMMUNITY

• Main Authors: Stella Peres Mendes, Gabriela Fernandes Nogueira, Raquel Rocha Marques dos Santos, Renata Maria Senger Corato, Antonio José Teixeira Guerra
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Editora da Universidade Federal de Uberlândia 2005-05-01
• Series: Revista Sociedade & Natureza
• Online Access: http://www.sociedadenatureza.ig.ufu.br/include/getdoc.php?id=1491&article=764&mode=pdf

Nature models the environment, provoking several physical processes as massmovements, erosion and sedimentation. Human action tends to intensify and accelerateenvironmental impacts, that become harmful to society, causing accidents that, depending onthe intensity, can cause tragedies.Mass movements are one of the processes that can cause more damages to the physicalenvironment and to society. According to Hamblin and Christiansen (1998), mass movementsinclude all types of collapses on the slopes. There are several types of mass movements, butlandslides are the most important ones, because it possess several condition factors and areevents that cause more problems to society.The increase of the urbanization Rio de Janeiro State causes the occupation of theslopes in an irregular and disordered way, resulting settlement, considerable environmentalimpacts on the controlling factors of the natural processes, causing other impacts, such asmass movements, that degrade not only the landscape, as well as people's life (Oliveira,2000).Some authors call the attention to the fact that the environmental degradation is, bydefinition, a social problem (Blaike and Brookfield, 1987). Some environmental processes, asleaching, erosion, mass movements and floods can happen with or without the humanintervention. In this way, characterizing physical processes, as environmental degradation, isto take into consideration social approaches that relate land use, or at least, with the potentialof several use types (Cunha and Guerra, 2003).