A localização da Bacia Hidrográfica do Rio Jundiaí-Mirim, próximo a grandes centros urbanos e parques industriais, tem contribuído para a valorização das suas terras; em consequência, a região apresenta intenso processo de urbanização, que resultou em um aumento crescente da perturbação ambiental nas áreas florestais. Dada à necessidade de manutenção da vegetação natural, visto que a bacia hidrográfica é a fonte da água utilizada no abastecimento de Jundiaí, SP, este trabalho avaliou as modificações na qualidade ambiental dos fragmentos florestais da bacia hidrográfica entre 1972 e 2013. A qualidade ambiental foi determinada por meio da avaliação de nove indicadores de perturbação ambiental obtidos através de técnicas de Geoprocessamento e integrados pela Análise Multicritério. Os resultados mostraram uma tendência constante de deterioração da qualidade ambiental da vegetação natural entre 1972 e 2013, atribuída ao intenso processo de ocupação da bacia hidrográfica. Concluiu-se que: (a) a urbanização e o desmatamento da vegetação natural foram os principais responsáveis pelas alterações na qualidade ambiental; (b) existe a necessidade de criação de políticas públicas para a preservação da vegetação natural do manancial.

Water demand, pollution, and climate change threaten water security in industrialized and urbanized regions worldwide, especially in developing countries. Investments in massive infrastructure have often not met the water needs of the population, requiring water resource managers to adopt new approaches, such as decentralized and regionalized management at the micro-basin scale. However, little is known about the impact of anthropogenic activities on the water quality and vulnerability of streams that cross urban areas and feed into the main rivers and reservoirs supplying cities and industrial regions. The main goals of this research were to evaluate the water quality, pollutant loads, and effect of untreated sewage discharges in streams of the Piracicaba river basin, in the municipality of Americana, Southeast Brazil. The water quality parameters evaluated were as follows: pH, dissolved oxygen, electrical conductivity, biochemical oxygen demand, inorganic phosphorus, total phosphorus, total nitrogen, real colour, turbidity, total dissolved solids, metals (Ba, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb, Cd, and Zn), total coliforms, and Escherichia coli. Descriptive statistics and multivariate analyses were performed. The results revealed chemical and biological degradation of the water resources, and vulnerability of the urban streams due to the release of untreated sewage into these waterways. The findings indicate the need for an immediate implementation of policies to monitor and control discharges of industrial effluents into the sewage collection systems, as well as discharges of sewage into rainwater drainage systems, together with the maintenance of green spaces.

Environmental damage and impacts from anthropogenic activities has led to the need for methodological development for its evaluation to subsidize environmental and human health management models. In this context, landscape analysis is a technique that incorporates a set of methods and procedures for understanding and explaining the structure, properties, indexes and parameters influenced by the occupation and use of the land. The main goal of this research was to present an environmental assessment methodology to represent the landscape, in simplified form, in order to identify environmental damage and impacts, to establish criteria and to propose management models for the Jundiaí Mirim river basin, São Paulo state, Brazil. This approach integrates fundamental methodological procedures through compartmentation, stratification, highlighted elements, characterization and evaluation of the landscape, considering physical, biotic and anthropogenic indicators. The results show its potential for educational, research and extension proposals because of its simple and expeditious character. Therefore it was possible to obtain a landscape efficiency index, clear and objective, that promoted the understanding of the landscape. As guidelines for the river basin management we highlighted soil conservation plans, solid waste management and sanitation in urban areas, and land use planning to protect the supply reservoir of Jundiaí city.

The success in environmental recovery process is highly dependent on the knowledge of the characteristics of the new environment formed. Knowledge about historical degradation, activities developed, aspects and negative environmental impacts of human activity, allied with the characteristics of the new environment formed, allows the definition of effective strategies to the environmental recovery process. In this sense there is a necessity to develop more effective techniques and proposals for environmental recovery in degraded areas especially those that are located in regions with high environmental relevance, and explored by activities which promote a high degree of change in the environmental components. This paper presents a methodology for recovery of mined areas, using the assessment of environmental damage to define the recovery strategies. The work was developed in the Amazon ecosystem in a region explored by Cassiterite mining. The environmental damage was assessed in terms of the physical and biotic environment components, listed from the environmental aspects and impacts of historical exploration. Physical and chemical analyzes of degraded substrates were used to support zoning processes and to select the recovery activities. The methodology allowed identifying different degraded conditions in substrates, and determining the most affected environmental components. It was possible to define appropriate actions to recover the location, consolidating a methodology to manage degraded areas by mining and other activities with similar levels of environment alteration.