Environmental planning in the medium littoral of the Rio Grande do Sul coastal plain – Southern Brazil: Elements for coastal management

The Medium Littoral of the Rio Grande do Sul coastal plain comprises about 2.5 million inhabitants living in the 17 municipalities along the Patos Lagoon coast. The Patos Lagoon is the largest lagoon in Brazil and the second largest in South America, with an area of about 10,000 km2. It is connected to the Atlantic Ocean through a narrow canal and sustains artisanal fisheries, familiar agriculture and Indian activities in the vicinity, as well as high technology agriculture and industry. The National Coastal Management Plan founded the Brazilian coastal management policy, which explicitly depends on spatial tools. Thus, the present work aims to understand the spatial structure and dynamics of the medium littoral of Rio Grande do Sul State to support coastal management. An important basis for policy was developed analyzing the land use and cover changes occurred in the last decades and their historical, political, and socioeconomic context. We propose an environmental zoning scheme and build a prediction model of land change. The environmental zoning specifies three management classes – preservation, conservation, and development – covering 23.3%, 9.7% and 67.0% of the area, respectively. The land change prediction model points the areas most likely susceptible to change. These should be priority areas for planning. The results we present have been used in environmental regulation instruments at municipal level. This paper also discusses the potential to further integrate our results with other mechanisms and scales of coastal management.

► We examined the land use changes occurred in the coastal zone.
► We proposed an environmental zoning and modeled land use change.
► Change is triggered by market/government and conditioned by spatial characteristics.
► Land use is a quality indicator for all coastal management instruments in Brazil.