In recent decades, with the increasing global need for sustainable development, ecotourism has emerged as one of the most efficient activities that can be used to reconcile economic development with environmental conservation. A growing interest in the ecotourism and ecosystem services provided by landscapes makes such services increasingly necessary within municipal planning processes. This study aims to construct a geoenvironmental model based on geographic information systems (GISs) to spatially identify areas with greater capacity to promote ecotourism, with a practical case study of the city of Brotas, Brazil. The model can produce an integrated analysis of landscape components using geoenvironmental, topographic, and urban data. As a result, four zones were classified according to their ecotourism potential, with 81% of the overall local territory showing great potential, which not only reinforces the territory’s resilience regarding sustainable development, but also demonstrates that ecotourism should be included in discussions related to environmental planning in Brotas, as well as in other municipalities that have ecotourism potential.

The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) is often used to evaluate the impacts of different land use scenarios on streamflow and sediment yield, but there is a need for some clear recommendations on how to select the parameter set that defines a given land use scenario and on what is the most appropriate methodology to change the selected parameters when describing possible future conditions. This paper reviews the SWAT formulation to identify the parameters that depend on the land use, performs a sensitivity analysis to determine the ones with larger impacts on the model results and discusses ways to consider future land use conditions. The case study is the Atibaia river basin, with 2838 km² (São Paulo, Brazil). The parameters identified by sensitivity analysis with the largest impacts on streamflow and sediment yield were the initial curve number for moisture condition II (CN), maximum canopy storage for each land use (CANMX) and the cover and management factor (USLE_C). The identification and appropriate parameter change can provide real estimates of the magnitudes in the land use changes, which were verified in this study. Such information can be used as an instrument for proposing improvements in the basin’s environmental quality and management.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to estimate quick and low-cost processes for surface runoff potential on the basis of natural environmental attributes.Design/methodology/approach: An approach based on the natural environmental attributes and on the Cook’s method was used for maximal peak flows of surface runoff, as well as for assigning weights to the considered attributes. Used attributes are as follow: steepness, bedrock (lithology), soil (texture, genesis, thickness, and permeability coefficient), drainage density, and favorable features to surface storage.Findings: Using natural environmental attributes from previous available studies, adapted from different scales, the authors obtain a low-cost potential surface runoff chart, which can be useful for planning, impact and hazard analysis, and decision purposes in an area without large financial resources, like small communities in developing countries. Despite the common scarcity of data in these communities, often regional basic studies of soil and bedrock are available, making this kind of analysis possible.Originality/value: The highlights are quick and low-cost procedures in characterizing the natural environment for planning activities, providing the basis for further detailing, which focus on solving local problems. This approach to runoff estimation allows for the definition of the criteria, considering the potential geodynamic processes. Thus, this kind of study may be very useful for land use planning in developing countries.

Nanocellulose was successfully synthetized from microcrystalline cellulose by an acid hydrolysis process. The sample characterization was performed employing X-ray diffraction, zeta potential and confocal Raman microscopy. Nanocellulose-reinforced thermoplastic starch (TPS) composites were prepared by solution casting method, in which a small concentration of nanocellulose improved the elastic modulus of TPS. This property was calculated using the atomic force microscopy nanoindentation method. We conclude that nanocellulose is a good mechanical reinforcement for composites from commercial sources as starch.