Natural disasters have been responsible for thousands of deaths in recent decades that, added to the environmental, social and economic impacts, require the implementation of prevention strategies. The largest share of disasters is of hydrological origin. In this context, hydrological models are potential alternatives for monitoring and preventing events of this nature. The objective of this study was to analyze the applicability of the semi-distributed model SWAT (Soil and Water Assessment Tool) and the concentrated model SMAP (soil moisture accounting procedure) in predicting the extreme flood event that occurred in Brazil in the mountainous region of Rio de Janeiro in 2011. The results showed that the mean relative error in calibration and validation was 12% and 53% for SMAP, and 18.46% and 88.73% for SWAT, respectively. The better performance of SMAP in validation integrated with its ease of data collection, simplicity of execution and semi-automatic calibration included in its routine, allows for the conclusion that this model proved to be more suitable for hydrological monitoring. In this study, for the first time, a model of SWAT’s complexity was applied to a watershed located in the mountainous region of the state of Rio de Janeiro, a region that, unfortunately, has accounted for thousands of deaths over the past decades associated with mass movements and floods. The SWAT model, besides being able to predict the level and flow of the main course of the river and its tributaries, also enables the calculation of sediment transport in extreme events. Looking from an operational point of view, the work clearly shows how poor hydro-meteorological monitoring, as is the case in this region, makes a good quality prediction for extreme events impossible. It was demonstrated that under these conditions, a simpler and concentrated modeling approach, such as the SMAP model, is able to obtain better results than SWAT.

This study analyses the importance of Brazilian ports, based on the flow of non-containerized cargo in 2014, considering both national and foreign trades. For that, we study a non-traditional centrality, called layer centrality, which evaluates the importance of ports, based on how well they are connected to influential ports. This measurement was preliminarily proposed in 2011 and applied to a simple nonweighted network, though herein we extend it to weighted graphs. For comparison purposes, we also apply three traditional measures, namely degree, eigenvector, and flow betweenness centralities. Our findings show that the most impactful ports are private terminals Ponta da Madeira and Tubarão, although public ports, particularly Santos, are usually impactful for national trades. Moreover, we analysed the map for public ports and suggest a suitable location for a new public port.

This work is committed to analyze processes of land use and land cover change in the Ilha Grande Bay Watershed, located in Rio de Janeiro State, southeast of Brazil, from 2013 to 2018, by means of spatial dynamic modeling, with a focus on the role of native communities and conservation units. For this purpose, the Dinamica EGO modeling platform was used, which is designed to simulate land use and land cover change (LUCC) employing the Bayesian weights of evidence method for parameterization and relying on the cellular automata paradigm. Spatio-temporal analyses of LUCC were carried out for twelve sub-watersheds, which are known as planning hydrological units in Brazil, laying emphasis on the transition rates and weights assigned to the native communities and conservation units. In the Fully Protected Conservation Units, a trend of negative weights assigned to deforestation and urbanization transitions was observed. On the other hand, the Sustainable Use Conservation Units revealed a great pressure on the natural coastal environments, where human occupation is prevailing. The native communities present peculiar dynamics within their territories, which mostly prevent urbanization processes to occur. The adopted Bayesian method was able to describe and simulate LUCC in the study area, and its results may support related management initiatives. The weights assigned to the conservation units unravel their behavior with respect to the concerned transitions, and the simulation results yielded satisfactory Fuzzy Similarity Indices. This work enabled the understanding of dynamics occurred within conservation units and native communities, meant to help the formulation of guidelines for land and environmental planning.

Movimentos de massa são processos de evolução da paisagem condicionados por fatores geológicos, geomorfológicos, hidrológicos, climáticos e da cobertura vegetal. A região Sudeste do Brasil destaca-se pela ocorrência de eventos catastróficos, pois combina a ocupação das encostas com as características fisiográficas que a deixam altamente suscetível a diferentes tipos de movimentos de massa, destacando-se os escorregamentos translacionais. Embora tenham um importante papel na evolução da paisagem, a ocorrência de movimentos de massa em áreas ocupadas por atividades antrópicas tem gerado inúmeras perdas humanas e prejuízos econômicos. Foi o que ocorreu em janeiro de 2011 na região serrana do Rio de Janeiro, atingida por fortes chuvas que desencadearam eventos de extrema magnitude, e provocaram, além de destruição e morte, marcas profundas (cicatrizes) na paisagem que podem auxiliar no estudo dos processos de movimentos de massa. Este trabalho, assim, tem como objetivo analisar as relações espaciais entre a morfologia das encostas e a cobertura da terra com a ocorrência dos movimentos de massa em janeiro de 2011 na região serrana fluminense. Para tanto, foi realizado um estudo na bacia do rio Roncador, Nova Friburgo (Estado do Rio de Janeiro), com a sobreposição entre o mapeamento das cicatrizes, das variáveis morfológicas das encostas e das classes de cobertura da terra. Os resultados mostram que as cicatrizes predominaram em encostas de forma côncava e íngremes, além de cobertas por vegetação densa, corroborando com a literatura que aponta a declividade e a forma da encosta como fatores condicionantes significativos à ocorrência de movimentos de massa, em especial, dos escorregamentos translacionais.Palavras–chave: escorregamentos translacionais, corridas de lama, sistema de informação geográfica, desastre natural.Abstract Mass movements are landscape evolution processes conditioned by geological, geomorphological, hydrological, climatological and land cover factors. Southeastern Brazil is distinguished by the occurrence of catastrophic landslides events, due to the association of land use and physiographic factors which cause high susceptibility to the occurrence of different types of mass movements, mainly translational slides. Although mass movements have an important role in landscape evolution, their occurrence in areas occupied by human activities has generated numerous life human and economic losses. The mountainous region of Rio de Janeiro, in January 2011, was affected by rainstorms that caused the occurrence of extreme magnitude landslide events, which caused destruction and death as well as deep scars in the landscape, which can contribute to the study of mass movements processes. This paper aims to analyse the spatial relationships between the morphology of the slopes, the land cover and the occurrence of mass movements in January 2011 in the mountainous region of Rio de Janeiro. The study was performed in the Roncador river basin, Nova Friburgo municipality, by overlaying the spatial distribution of landslide scars with morphological variables of the slopes and land cover classes. The results show that the scars predominated on steep and concave slopes covered by dense vegetation, which corroborates the literature that indicates the slope and the curvature as a significant conditioning factor to the occurrence of mass movements, in particular, the translational slides.Keywords: translational slides, mudflows, geographic information system, natural disaster.