Development, urban planning and political decisions. A triad that built territories at risk.

Chilean geography exposes the country to high-level risks such as earthquakes and tsunamis. The disasters of 1930, 1960, 2010, and 2014 testify to the continuous link between human survival and disasters. However, new hazards have appeared ever since -i.e. flood waterlogging, wildfires, and landslides-, highlighting the relationship between current land uses and space occupation with increasing levels of disaster risk. This research aims to determine relations and responsibilities of the Chilean developmental approach in urban planning and territorial governance processes that have created new territories prone to disaster risk. We resort to a longitudinal analysis from 1930 to 2018 at the Gran Concepción metropolitan area as a proxy of Chilean industrialization and economic development approaches. To do so, we developed mixed-approach descriptive research, for which we collected data from national development policies and documented land occupation processes during pre-dictatorship, dictatorship and post-dictatorship periods. Semi-structured interviews with decision-makers involved in current territorial policy were also carried out. The findings show how territorial governance resulted from political visions around different development paths, wherein the concept of risk is weakly perceived among decision-makers. This perception is linked to narrow economic goals and the understanding of land as a barely regulated marketable asset, profoundly affected by segregated urban planning.

A new method to evaluate the vulnerability of watersheds facing several stressors: A case study in mediterranean Chile.

Freshwater systems are subjected to multiple anthropogenic stressors and natural disturbances that act as debilitating agents and modifiers of river systems, causing cumulative and synergistic effects that deteriorate their health and result in watershed vulnerability. This study proposes an easy-to-apply spatial method of watershed vulnerability evaluation using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in the Andalién River watershed, located in the Chilean mediterranean. A watershed vulnerability index (WVI) based on three sub-indices - anthropogenic stressors, environmental fragility and natural disturbances - was developed. To determine the index grouping weights, expert surveys were carried out using the Delphi method. We subsequently normalized and integrated the factors of each sub-index with relative weights. The ranges of each thematic layer were re-classified to establish vulnerability scores. The watershed was divided into three sections: headwaters zone, transfer zone and depositional zone. The watershed vulnerability index showed that 41% of the watershed had very low vulnerability and 42% had medium vulnerability, while only 1% - in the depositional zone - had high vulnerability. A one-way ANOVA was carried out to analyze the vulnerability differences among the three sections of the watershed; it showed significant differences (F (2, 16) = 8.15: p < 0.05). The a posteriori test showed differences between the headwaters and depositional zones (Tukey test, p = 0.005) and between the transfer and depositional zones (Tukey test, p = 0.014). To validate the WVI, water quality was measured at 16 stations in the watershed; there was a significant correlation between vulnerability level and NO2- levels (r = 0.8; p = 0.87; α = 0.05) and pH (r = 0.8; p = 0.80; α = 0.05). The WVI showed the cumulative effects of multiple stressors in the depositional zone of the watershed. This is the first study to evaluate and validate non-regulated watershed vulnerability with GIS using multiple anthropogenic and natural stressors.

Tuberculosis in Pre-Columbian Andean populations

It reports a study of tuberculosis in cultural groups of the pre-Columbian Andean populations of Peru and northern Chile.(AU)