Litter abundance and typology were investigated at different beaches and mangrove forests at nine sites on the Colombian Caribbean and Pacific coasts. Average litter abundance on the Caribbean Sea beaches (1.42 items/m²–12.21 g/m²) and in mangrove forests (1.29 items/m²–28.72 g/m²) were greater than that of the Pacific Ocean beaches (0 items/m²–0 g/m²) and mangrove forests (1.13 items/m²–79.41 g/m²). The most abundant litter material was plastic, which represented 93.61% of the total litter content. According to the Clean Coast Index, the sites analyzed in the Caribbean Sea were “Moderate” to “Extremely Dirty”, while those in the Pacific Ocean were “Clean” to “Moderate Dirty”. The Magdalena River is considered the main source of litter on the Caribbean Sea coast, while on the Pacific Ocean coast, litter is essentially associated with the mismanagement of solid wastes. This study constitutes a baseline on the litter content of beaches and mangrove forests, and is useful for establishing sound strategies for their protection, restoration and conservation.

The great importance of mangroves’ forest is linked to their capacity of resilience against natural and human impacts, this way playing a determinant function in the adaptation to climatic change related processes. At global scale, mangroves’ forests cover an area of 150,000 km2, 11% (≈16,500 km2) of them being located along the Pacific and Caribbean coasts of South America. About 70 species of mangroves exist around the World with 10 observed in South America, among them the most relevant are: Rhizophora mangle, Avicennia germinans, Laguncularia racemosa and Conocarpus erectus. Concerning mangroves’ cover loss, at global scale, an annual rate of 0.16% was observed between 2000 and 2012 with lower rates recorded in South America respect to Asia, Africa, North and Central America. This paper analyses the main effects of natural and human impacts on mangroves’ forests by means of examples from South America and several other countries. Concerning natural impacts special attention was devoted to: i) constant and ii) specific erosion processes (related to storms and tropical cyclones), both of them essentially affect Rizophora mangle since this specie occurs at the shoreline meanwhile strong winds recorded during hurricanes (with a category > 3 of the Saffir-Simpson scale) especially affects R. mangle and A. germinans, and iii) the effects of climatic phenomena such as “El Niño” and “La Niña” that produce variations in soil salinity that determinates the establishment and growth of a mangrove’s specie or an other. Concerning human impacts special attention was paid to illegal logging that, in the Northern Caribbean of Colombian coast essentially affectes L. racemosa, which wood is used by local population to build up cabins on the beaches for tourist purposes. Keywords: Coastal erosion, Hurricane, El Niño, Deforestation, Salinity.

Thermal stress due to high temperatures has different negative effects on citizens as it generates a decrease in physical capacity and causes cardiovascular and respiratory alterations, which is especially true for pedestrians. In this paper, using a drone, routes for pedestrians with the best thermal comfort were traced between the different headquarters of the Simón Bolívar University (Barranquilla, Colombia). Maps were created for three time intervals, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., from 1 to 2 p.m. and from 2 to 3 p.m., and variations in temperature and relative humidity of both natural and artificial shadow areas were identified. The routes with the best thermal comfort were those with natural shade that presented ca. 3 °C less than the unshaded areas. The predominant trees’ genera in most of the traced pedestrian routes were Arecaceae (palm), Tabebuia (purple oak), Mangifera (mango), and Delonix (red acacia). Some of them lose their leaves between March and June, which gives rise to an increase in the temperature along those routes. The developed cell phone application allows for the selection of walking environments with the best thermal comfort, favoring the mobility of the pedestrians along the considered area.

Beaches represent important economic resources linked to “Sun, Sea and Sand” tourism and, therefore, their water quality constitutes an issue of great relevance especially in developing countries. The main objective of this work was to determine the microbial quality of beach sediments along the Caribbean coast of the Department of Atlántico (Colombia) and its relationships with the existence of local sources of contamination (e.g., streams containing wastewaters), beach exposition to waves, the quantity of beach visitors—which is reflected by beach typology (e.g., urban, rural, etc.), the presence of tourist activities/infrastructures and the beach sand sedimentological characteristics. Along the study area, samples of beach sediments were gathered in beach face and backshore areas at 11 sectors and the microbiological counts of three faecal indicator bacteria, i.e., Escherichia coli, Enterococcus spp. and Clostridium perfringens, were determined. A homogeneous distribution was recorded along the coast of Escherichia coli and Clostridium perfringens in both beach face and backshore sediments, in the order of 5 and 2 log CFU/100 mL, respectively; Enterococcus spp. was, at places, not observed in backshore sediments. No relationships existed between, on one side, the counts of the faecal indicator bacteria considered and, on the other side, the presence of streams and tourist activities/infrastructures, beach typology, exposition to waves and the sedimentological characteristics of beach sands. Such results suggest a chronic contamination of beach face and backshore sediments linked to the heavily polluted sedimentological load of the Magdalena River.

Mangrove forests provide essential ecosystem services but are increasingly threatened by anthropogenic pressures and climate-related disturbances. Effective and accessible tools for assessing mangrove ecosystem condition are therefore needed to soundly support their conservation and management. This study adapted the “Coastal Health” framework originally proposed for assessing coastal ecosystems health to evaluate the health status of mangrove forests along the Caribbean coast of Colombia. Using freely available high-resolution imagery from Google Earth Pro 7.3, complemented by field observations, technical reports, and unpublished literature, 56 mangrove sites distributed across eight coastal departments were assessed according to their ecological integrity, hydrological connectivity, sediment dynamics, freshwater and marine inputs, mangrove species condition, and their potential for landward and seaward migration. The results showed that 54% of the evaluated sites were classified as being in “Good Health”, while 2% were categorized as “Health Warning”, 3% as “Surface Wounds”, 14% as “Minor Injury”, 25% as “Major Injury”, and 2% as “Deceased”. Mangroves in good condition were generally associated with protected areas, river mouths, estuaries, and relatively isolated coastal systems, whereas degraded ecosystems were affected by urban expansion, tourism infrastructure, hydrological alterations, coastal engineering works, and reduced freshwater inputs. The proposed methodology proved to be a simple, low-cost, and easily replicable tool for large-scale mangrove health assessment. It provides valuable information for prioritizing conservation and restoration actions and can be adapted to support mangrove monitoring and ecosystem-based coastal management in other regions worldwide.