Ninth International Conference on The Constructed Environment

Abstract

The potteries are ceramist industries which use in their productive process natural resources for the manufacture, mainly, of tiles and bricks. The objective of this research is to measure the environmental vulnerability caused by the pottery installed in the Seridó region of Brazil. This research had a descriptive, exploratory, qualitative, bibliographic, documentary, field (with in situ observation) and applied (application of the environmental vulnerability from Turner et al. (2003)) character. At the conclusion of the study it was shown that after the application of the model, the three dimensions researched indicate that the ceramic activity has an impact on the environment in which it is installed, the dimension of the exposure showed damages in nearby and adjacent areas due to the extraction of clay, firewood and water consumption, due mainly to the scarcity of this resource in the region, the sensitivity dimension, identified irreparable damage to the environment, such as soil erosion and the devastation of the fauna, the size of the resilience revealed inadequacy in the pottery facilities and the pollution caused in nature by solid waste. It was verified that this activity requires measures of prevention, control, and monitoring of the public managers for the mitigation of such problems.