Alterações no perfil natural da zona costeira da cidade de Fortaleza, Ceará, ao longo do Século XX

Abstract

The objective of this dissertation is to present a synthesis of the natural processes related with the social changes of coastal area of Fortaleza city, Northeast of Brazil, along an area of 23 km, during the 20th century. The study area has been individualized in two bands: southeast/northwest and east/west. The first goes from the mouth of Cocó river until the Mucuripe headland and the second, from this point until the estuary of Ceará river. These bands are dynamic features that are suffering with the advance and recession of the shoreline. Its position changes constantly in many scales (daily and seasonal, but associated with centuries and millenniums). In such a way, the beach band of Fortaleza is affected by a very great number of factors, some of natural origins and related to the coastal dynamics (coastal erosion, relative variation of the sea level, dispersion of sediments), others related with human interventions in the coastal zone (workmanships of engineering, drainings, nourishement of beaches, construction of ridges and seawalls). The envirormental impact and the changes, natural and artificial, in these areas, are considerable. For these reasons there is an intense advance of the shoreline in the band southeast/northwest (Futuro beach, Caça e Pesca and Serviluz), with progradation of the beach profile. In the band east/west occurs an intense erosion of the shoreline in direction to the continent (Meireles, Iracema, Pirambu, Barra do Ceará). These processes are more intense after the construction of the Mucuripe harbor, that modified drastically the coastal dynamics of the studied area and its a marker of the environmental chauges in the coast of Fortaleza city during the 20th century.