Os Serviços Ecossistêmicos em Geossítios do Geopark Araripe (CE), Nordeste do Brasil

Abstract

Geoparks are one of the main actions of nature conservation, above all, its abiotic aspects-geodiversity. In the world there are 161 geoparks (Jul/2020), in 44 countries organized in network, the UNESCO Global Geoparks and Geoparks Global Network, in which, in Brazil, only the Araripe Geopark is a member. Any intention to define geoparks starts with the inventory of geodiversity and the hierarchy of locations based on the valuation of geodiversity elements, fundamental for the elaboration of geoconservation actions. In this context, the objective of this work is to identify the ecosystem services in the Geopark Araripe geosites, in the southern Brazilian state of Ceará, associated with geodiversity values, based on Gray’s methodology (2013). Methodologically, a bibliographic update on the evaluation of geodiversity and ecosystem services was carried out, which was based on fieldwork in the Araripe Geopark in February 2019. These stages allowed the realization of descriptions of each of the geosites and, consequently, the survey and review of geodiversity ecosystem services for each of them. As a result, 19 of the 25 goods and processes, distributed among the 05 services (regulation, support, provision, cultural and knowledge) were identified in the geosites, while three geosites have the five types of associated services: Batateira, Cachoeira of Missão Velha and Riacho do Meio. On the other hand, the Floresta Petrificada do Cariri geosite is the one with the lowest number of identified services. It is understood that the identification of ecosystem services in geosites is an environmental interpretation tool, which can be used in the dissemination of geosciences and the geopark itself, while trying to identify the importance of geodiversity to the ecosystem, being the human being included in this concept. These dimensions constitute significant subsidies for the geoconservation in the territory of the Araripe Geopark. © 2020, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. All rights reserved.