Citizen science as a tool for collaborative site-specific oil spill mapping: the case of Brazil.

Many maritime disasters lead to oil pollution, which undermines ecosystem balance, human health, the prosperity of countries and coastal areas across borders, and people's livelihoods. This is a problem that affects the whole world. Governments must strive to ensure that operations in the marine environment are safe and avoid oil pollution by adopting methods that anticipate future scenarios to mitigate the effects of this pollution when it occurs. This study investigates a method of managing contaminated coastal areas, aiming to contribute to the management of the environmental crisis caused by disasters through the use of online collaborative mapping by volunteer collaborators. Volunteer collaborators have been sending georeferenced data and photographs of locations affected by pollution. This information is processed and printed on a cartographic basis created by the web-mapping platform, Google MyMaps©. Photos of 90 locations were plotted on the map, and the pictures demonstrate that the oil slicks that reached the Brazilian coast had very different shapes and consistency. This research can contribute as a participatory monitoring tool during and after oil spills, promoting the oriented preservation of marine ecosystems through citizen science.

O papel da geografia em face da crise ambiental / The role of geography in the face of the environmental crisis

Diante da crise ambiental atual, diversas disciplinas científicas têm se voltado para sua análise, a fim de apontar soluções para dirimir ou minimizar os danos ambientais e sociais causados pelas atividades econômicas e por outros tipos de fatores de pressão ambiental. Este artigo propõe-se inicialmente a mostrar sucintamente como mudou a visão geográfica predominante no mundo ocidental a respeito da relação entre as populações humanas e o ambiente. Uma mudança de visão que foi reflexo das mudanças que estavam em curso na geografia como um todo, resguardadas as diferenças entre os países. Discute-se ainda que a crise ambiental é uma crise do conhecimento, como afirmam cada vez mais autores. Este texto culmina com as virtudes e limitações da geografia na busca desse entendimento, no intuito de colaborar para seu avançar

Given the current environmental crisis, various scientific disciplines have striven to analyze it and identify solutions to resolve or minimize the environmental and social damage caused by economic activities and other types of environmental stress factors. This article proposes to briefly show how the predominant geographic vision has changed in the Western world with regard to the relationship between human populations and the environment. This change of vision was a reflection of the changes that were taking place in Geography as a whole, with allowances for differences between countries. It is also argued that the environmental crisis is a crisis of knowledge, as some authors claim. The text culminates with the virtues and limitations of Geography in the pursuit of this understanding, with the aim of advancing it