The beaches of ceará

Abstract

The coastal zone of Ceara State, in Northeastern Brazil, extends for 573 km in a SE- NW direction. It is predominantly composed of sandy sediments of Upper Tertiary-Quaternary age with several generations of Pleistocene transgressive dunes, together with beaches, estuarine plains and localized occurrences of cliffs. The Precambrian rocks also occur on some beaches. The climate is semi-arid tropical and the rivers only flow into the sea during the rainy season. The dunes, beaches and estuary margins have experienced serious problems derived from the loss of sand material that have been taken to be used in coastal engineering, edifications and natural environmental degradation processes concerned to the sediment budget. In this context, this chapter focuses the description of the morphodynamics characteristics of the beaches of Ceara State, highlighting the factors controlling spatial and temporal processes, as well as discussing the impacts, potential uses and limitations of these areas. The results indicate that today this coastal erosion, either natural or induced by man, is perceived as the most significant threat to maintaining services in areas that depend upon tourism, traditional economic activities, housing and other pertinent uses of the beaches. It has been pointed out that the natural and human impacts represent the main and outstanding challenges for dwellers and the coastal managers who need to find out the new ways of living and occupation, includes redesigning the processes of house constructions and keeping up with minimizing the impacts. Then, the main actions that deal with the use and abuse of this littoral are discussed in this chapter. The environmental problems have to be strictly controlled, particularly stabilization of the mobile dune and preventing development of cliffs and headlands.