Banca de QUALIFICAÇÃO: LARICIA GOMES SOARES

LANDSCAPE ANALYSIS AND PARTICIPATORY MAPPING IN BAÍA FORMOSA (RN)

Landscape; participatory mapping; natural resources; potentialities; problems/limitations.

Baía Formosa, a municipality located in the state of Rio Grande do Norte, has socio-environmental problems and conflicts related to the use of its natural resources. The diverse use of each portion of the territory by different agents, especially in the last decade, highlights changes, impacts and conflicts in this area. Given this context, the present research aims to elaborate a participatory mapping of the municipality, highlighting potentialities and limitations/problems, through the interpretation of the landscape and the diverse use of the natural resources present in the territory. For this, citizens groups are the focus of this analysis as participating in the study. The representative agents of the urban headquarters and the Pituba and Vila da Usina districts. The representative group of fishermen; and, two indigenous communities in the Sagi district, the Jacú and the Sagi Trabanda villages. In terms of theoretical-methodological contribution, the main bases of the research are the Geoecology of Landscapes, and the Social Cartography. where authors such as Silva (1998), Rodriguez, Silva and Cavancanti (2013), Farias (2012, 2015), Rodriguez e Silva (2018), Teixeira, Silva and Farias (2017), Acselrad (2008, 2013), Vázquez and Massera (2012), Gorayeb, Meireles and Silva (2015), Costa, Gorayeb, Paulino, Sales and Silva (2016), Mendes (2016), Almeida (2018) and Costa (2016, 2021). In methodological terms, the study is based on four phases inherent to the Geoecology of Landscapes, which were adapted for the research, namely: organization and inventory phase, which concerns the construction of a database; analysis phase, in which reflections are made on the territory and use of its resources; diagnostic phase, in which strengths and limitations are spatialized; and proposition phase, centered on the path to sustainability. All of them, in this work, occur in line with the Social Cartography triad: investigation-action-participation. As a result, a participatory social mapping of the urban center of the municipality of Baía Formosa (RN) was carried out, with emphasis on the potentialities and problems identified in the area. Therefore, it is expected that the analyzes and products arising from the research may help Baía Formosa (RN), as a municipality and society aggregate, to understand and invest in its potential, respecting its limitations, mitigating problems and conflicts, in order to achieve a relationship between human activities and the support capacity of the environment that is more compatible with the local reality.