Community Perceptions for Geoconservation of a Coastal Area in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

We collected socio-environmental data from the inhabitants of a coastal area in the State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in order to investigate the local knowledge about environmental, economic and cultural particularities of the area and the main human activities that impact the environment. Community perceptions from 11 localities in the Região dos Lagos were evaluated. The data analysis can help in the development of specific geoconservation activities for the study area, which is located in the aspirant Geopark ‘Costões e Lagunas do Rio de Janeiro’. This initiative of considering community perceptions can help to maintain and protect local geological sites, raise public awareness of environmental matters and help to manage the development of the new Geopark. Furthermore, it can also contribute to the sustainable development of the area and to the planning of effective policies to sustain progress. Taking into consideration the answers and needs of the interviewed communities, the key topics requiring geoconservation activities in the study area are land use planning and biodiversity, urban mobility, continuous monitoring strategy, environmental awareness, wastewater, urbanisation, geotourism, sense of place, waste and economical activities.ISSN:1867-2477ISSN:1867-248

Investigation of processes producing dolomite/clay mineral associations in natural environments and culture experiments

Bathurst Meeting of Carbonate Sedimentologists. 16th International Meeting of Carbonate Sedimentologists, Mallorca (España), 9th-11th July 201

Targeting Sustainability Issues at Geosites: a Study in Região dos Lagos, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

The aim of this study is to assess sustainability issues for a number of geosites in a study area of Região dos Lagos in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The area within the proposed Geopark ‘Costões e Lagunas do Rio de Janeiro’ is well-known for its natural environment with unusual cliffs and hypersaline lagoons, some of them containing stromatolites. We have evaluated the changes in land use and land cover in this coastal area of Brazil over the last four decades and their relation to anthropogenic activities in the area. Land use change statistics indicate that the urban areas have increased to the detriment of the natural vegetation and salt pans. Local knowledge of sustainability issues were considered in order to identify the main threats to and protection needs of the geosites. The sustainability issues comprise environmental awareness, land-use planning and biodiversity protection. The geosite identified with the best sustainability is São Mateus Fort. The geosites found to be the most threatened are Brejo do Espinho, Peró Dunes, Lagoa Vermelha and Mangue de Pedra. Educational projects have been implemented in urban and rural areas of Região dos Lagos to teach the local population the importance of geosites and sustainable development.ISSN:1867-2477ISSN:1867-248

Depositional age definition of the Açu Formation (Potiguar Basin, northeastern Brazil) through 40Ar-39Ar dating of early-authigenic K-feldspar overgrowths

Early-authigenic K-feldspar overgrowths are widespread in the Cretaceous fluvial Açu Formation sandstones from the Potiguar Basin, one of the most important onshore oil reservoirs of Brazil. These overgrowths were formed at near-surface conditions (early eodiagenesis), directly on detrital K- feldspar grains. The physical continuity between overgrowths and K-feldspar grains rendered impossible their separation by conventional means for K-Ar isotope analysis. An in situ Ar-Ar step-heating method was, therefore, applied and the minimum age of 120 Ma obtained for the authigenic overgrowths agrees with the depositional biostratigraphic age previously estimated for the Açu Formation. The method applied to the Açu Formation sandstones shows excellent potential for depositional age determination of other reservoir-sandstones. We suggest that future developments of the method will, however, greatly benefit from the use of ultra-violet (UV) laser for reducing chances of contamination of authigenic K-feldspar overgrowths analyses by detrital grains

Community Perceptions for Geoconservation of a Coastal Area in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

ISSN:1867-2477ISSN:1867-248

Toward Male Individualization with Rapidly Mutating Y-Chromosomal Short Tandem Repeats

Relevant for various areas of human genetics, Y-chromosomal short tandem repeats (Y-STRs) are commonly used for testing close paternal relationships among individuals and populations, and for male lineage identification. However, even the widely used 17-loci Yfiler set cannot resolve individuals and populations completely. Here, 52 centers generated quality-controlled data of 13 rapidly mutating (RM) Y-STRs in 14,644 related and unrelated males from 111 worldwide populations. Strikingly, >99% of the 12,272 unrelated males were completely individualized. Haplotype diversity was extremely high (global: 0.9999985, regional: 0.99836-0.9999988). Haplotype sharing between populations was almost absent except for six (0.05%) of the 12,156 haplotypes. Haplotype sharing within populations was generally rare (0.8% nonunique haplotypes), significantly lower in urban (0.9%) than rural (2.1%) and highest in endogamous groups (14.3%). Analysi