Posters
Exposure to Atmospheric Pollutants and Hospitalizations Due to Diseases of the Circulatory System, by Sex, in a Medium-sized City in Brazil
Poster Session Paola Cristina Ribeiro
High rates of pollutants are emitted daily into the atmosphere due to urban development, while thousands of dollars are spent on hospital stays in major cities. It is known the effects of exposure to air pollution in hospitalizations for diseases of the circulatory system, thus becoming a risk factor for the health of the population. The cost of these hospitalizations in a medium-sized city in Brazil generated an estimated expenditure of US $ 1.3 million in 2015. An ecological time-series study conducted in the city of Taubaté, state of São Paulo, performed with estimated data (PM2.5) [47μg / m3] and carbon monoxide (CO) [197 ppb], as well as data from hospitalizations of the environmental information system (SISAM) obtained from the portal of the Ministry of Health (1470 admissions) and categorized by gender [774], with a lag of 7 days [lag0 to lag7]. In the multi-pollutant analysis, a positive association was found for CO [male lag7] and PM2.5 [lag2, lag3 and lag4 male sex; female lag6]; with an increase of 10 μg / m3 at concentrations of pollutants, we would have a 7% increase in hospitalizations; reduction of 10 μg / m3 in these concentrations implies an approximate saving of US $ 93.3 thousand / year. All these data highlight the importance of the study of concentrations of air pollutants in the big cities, paying attention to the emission control in the atmosphere.
Carbon Dioxide Emissions and Changes in Carbon Stocks During Pasture Conversion to Sugarcane in Brazil
Poster Session Camila Bolfarini Bento
As the world's largest sugarcane producer Brazil has been observed the consequences of high demands for ethanol: sugarcane is expanding mainly toward Brazilian Midwest. Such region has extensive lands with low-intensity pastures considered carbon sinks. A field experiment was set up in São Paulo State to quantify CO2 emissions and carbon stocks in sugarcane and low-intensity pasture over five years. To quantify CO2 fluxes, samples were collected from 2013 to 2019 through chamber method. To carbon stock, samples were collected of trenches in 2013 and 2019. In sugarcane, fluxes increase as soon tillage was started and decreased to initial conditions after soil tillage was ended. Besides that, fluxes peaked by 30-40 days after fertilizer was applied. The fluxes fluctuated in the treatments, showing a tendency to follow seasonal variations and precipitation rates. Cumulative emissions were highest in pasture (minimum and maximum: 9319 and 16728 kg ha-1 yr-1) than in sugarcane (minimum and maximum: 7697 and 11616 kg ha-1 yr-1). Carbon stocks (0-80 cm) ranged from 168 MgC ha-1 to 199 MgC ha-1 in pasture and from 207 MgC ha-1 to 226 MgC ha-1 in fertilized sugarcane. Subtracting control data of sugarcane it was observed that, from 2013 to 2019, pasture accumulated ~15% more carbon than sugarcane. Although emissions had been highest in pasture, carbon accumulation was lower in sugarcane. Adoption of practices as conservational tillage, nitrification inhibitors, integrating nutrient management, mulching, and pasture improvement can lead to an increase on soil organic carbon sequestration and more sustainable agriculture.
Sustainability of Chiloé Island Socio-ecological System: Conceptual Coupling of Panarchy and Ecosystem Services
Poster Session Luisa Elizabeth Delgado, Daniela C. Pérez Orellana, Victor hernan Marín
Socioecological resilience can be understood as the system’s ability to innovate and generate more stable configurations, being insufficient to conceive it only as of the maintenance of relative stability. Although this has been explored through the concept of Panarchy, as the transition of change phases into an adaptive cycle (growth, conservation, creative destruction or collapse, and reorganization), they do not necessarily constitute a fixed sequence. Thus, a resilient socio-ecological system will be one that can successfully navigate its phases, sometimes skipping some of them, not stopping or getting into rigidities or traps. Alternatively, ecosystem services (i.e. the benefits that humans derive from ecosystems) historically used by human societies can be good indicators of the sustainability of these systems. Therefore, the coupling of both theoretical frameworks (e.g. through the development of conceptual models) allows the integration of bidirectional interactions between both subsystems (social and ecological). In this work, we characterize these interactions at several levels and scales (Panarchy) for Chiloé, which can be considered as a reference of ecological changes (e.g. recurring red tide events). The results show the existence of excessive subsidies from larger-scale cycles which tend to increase dependencies to those of smaller scales and higher speed. We propose that this could eventually reduce the ability of the socio-ecological system to self-organize (its resilience) and thereby limit its long-term sustainability. Financial support was provided by CONICYT-Chile (project FONDECYT N°1170532).
Transboundary River Basin - Sustainable Actions in La Plata
Poster Session Luis Paulo Silva
La Plata river basin is the second largest hydrological system in South America. It encompass five countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay), an area of 3.1 millions km² and the most important South American industrial regions. During the last decades of twentieth century the border regions among La Plata's countries observed the expansion of the agricultural frontier, and their integration with worldwide commodity chains. Hence, sustainable governance of shared water resources emerged as an issue of transboundary politics. Institutional actions were undertaken by national and subnational governments and by international organizations, such as the Comité Intergovernamental Coordenador (CIC Plata), an institution responsible to coordinate national actions along the shared river basin. Therefore, this paper analyses the CIC Plata's actions addressing sustainability of transboundary waters. It is assessed the project documents and achievements data in order to analyse sustainable transboundary actions within La Plata river basin.
Inequity in Development: Examining the Presence of Distributive Justice in the Sustainable Development Goals in Chile
Poster Session Diego Castillo Peredo
This thesis examines the assessments constructed by the Sustainable Development Goals under the lens of distributive justice and strong sustainability by exploring the geographic distribution of sub-national development performance across Chile. I hypothesize that the advancements toward the achievement of the SDGs have not been fairly distributed and generally favor areas where wealth and power reside. Despite overall successful national performance on the SDGs, the continuous high levels of inequality, the persistence of a neoliberal economic regime, and a unitary and physically centralized government all raise concerns about the geographic distribution of Chile’s development progress. By disaggregating selected SDG indicators at a municipal scale, this research determines whether national performance masks local concerns for both people and the environment. Through quantitative analysis, sub-national results are assessed on their divergence from national aggregates, on their variations across jurisdictions, and on their correlation to wealth and power. Data is obtained from Chile’s own performance reports to the United Nations and data sources used to calculate the national SDGs. By underscoring the limitation of the SDGs in achieving distributive justice and strong sustainability, the thesis examines the way they assess success for countries, their effectiveness in identifying genuine gaps for governments to work on, and, ultimately, their capacity to reach the fundamental goal of prosperity. As the increasing adoption of the SDGs set guidelines for government officials, acknowledging these shortcomings contributes to expand what must be factored in while using them to protect the same principles under which they were constructed.
Preparation of Magnetic Sodium Alginate-Thiourea Microbeads for Removal of Mercury
Poster Session David Patiño, Adriana P. Herrera Barros, Gezira De Ávila
Magnetite (Fe3O4) nanoparticles and thiourea were employed to modify sodium alginate microbeads for adsorption of Hg ions from aqueous solution. The Fe3O4 nanoparticles were initially synthesized by the co-precipitation method. Fourier infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) determined the presence of hydroxyl, carboxyl, thiol and amine functional groups in the microbead molecular structure. According to BET and BJH methods, the MAT microbeads had surface area, pore diameter and volume of 7.3472 m2/g, 12.9058 nm and 0.0255 cm3/g, respectively. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) equipped with an EDX system allowed to obtain morphological information of the MAT microbeads, in which was observed the main elements introduced by the presence of thiol groups and iron ions. The result of saturation magnetization (Ms) performed by a vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM), is common for superparamagnetic materials, which slightly decreased due to the low amount of magnetic nanoparticles in the microbead structure. Adsorption kinetics showed that highest rate was about 98% in the first 20 min, and then decreased to zero. Pseudo-first order was the model that better fitted to experimental data with a value about 2.6mg/g. Meanwhile, adsorption isotherm was better described using Langmuir model, suggesting that the Hg ions adsorption was mainly given by electrostatic interaction and chemical bonding among the functional groups, as well as the formation of a saturated layer onto the microbead surface occupying all the available sites.
