El Niño de 1997/1988: sistemas hídricos, degradação ambiental e vulnerabilidade socioeconômica no cariri paraibano.

Abstract

The objective of this work was to utilize the Remote Sensing and GIS techniques to evaluate the environmental degradation and socialeconomical vulnerabilities, that it was obtained through of the water resources and the agricultural lands questionares, due the climatic drought effects, using mapping system and the current utilization of the lands and the water resources, for the temporary comparative analysis of the periods before and the after EL NINO 1997/1998 event, to keep the Amparo and Ouro Velho cities sustained development. It was verified that the population use the nature for your survival, in order works, deforesting the native vegetation and using it for the coal manufactures or selling their woods to the potteries and bakeries. The consequences of this deforestation are disastrous, therefore, shallow soils, characteristic of the semi-arid areas, they are easily erosive, leaving a desolating landscape. The surface water resources observed in this areas have low storage capacity and in general they come upon in an serious degradation process, due the sediments transport from adjacents areas, without vegetation to river border, making evident the importance of the vegetation on the erosive process reduction. It was observed that there was an evolution of the degradation levels from low and moderate degradation to serious and very serious degradation in the previous to subsequent, Mega El Nino 1997/98 period. In the areas with very serious degradation, the population density is practically zero, there by, the exhaustion of the lands, make people move to other areas or others counties. By means of questionnaires (field research) it had been found high vulnerability values, that it express the county population fragility, where as the social, economical, technological factors and it also the droughts show public politics absence, that could be minimize the climatics effects (droughts), factor that brings others.