Sustainability and wetlands: the current state of conservation in the Araripe Plateau, northeastern Brazil

Wetlands are vital for delivering a range of ecosystem services including water supply and agricultural and recreational opportunities. However, these human activities can provoke their decline. The objective of my PhD research is to analyse wetlands situated in Araripe Plateau north-eastern Brazil, with a particular focus on understanding their environmental dynamics, and how human activities affect their functioning. Key question include: what are its predominant forms of land use in and around the wetlands? How does this affect the dynamics and long-term sustainability of the wetlands? To address, the following activities have been conducted: 1) field investigations in the dry and in the rainy seasons to understand the contrasting hydrological dynamics and analyse the prevalent forms of land use; 2) drone surveys to generate ortho-mosaics to contribute to land use analysis. The wetlands have been subdivided into different areas according to their hydrological regime. The wetlands with perennial flow are predominantly used for water supply and agriculture. For the wetland which has intermittent flow, the predominant land uses are agriculture and livestock farming, but the wetland still suffers from local sewage discharges. For this reason, it is necessary to manage these wetlands with greater consideration, to avoiding the negative environmental impacts so that future generations may continue to live in and around the wetlands. Preservation of the wetlands is essential for achieving local and regional sustainability and to enable Brazil to meet broader global sustainability goals (e.g., UN SDGs).