The YouthMappers chapter Unificar Ações e Informações Geoespaciais - UAIGeo UFSJ is mapping riverside villages and urban areas in Tefé - Amazonas, Brazil. The municipality didn’t have data on OpenStreetMap, which aroused interest of chapter members, including Évelyn Márcia possa, researcher at Instituto de Desenvolvimento Sustentável Mamirauá, based in the city, and professor Davy Braz Rabelo in Universidade Estadual do Amazonas.
To accelerate the mapping of the area and give visibility to villages, two projects were created in the HOT Tasking Manager platform with the name: MAPEAMENTO DE LOCALIDADES RIBEIRINHAS AMAZÔNICAS NO NORTE MUNICÍPIO DE TEFÉ - AM. Of these, one has had 220 total collaborators, and the other is in the initial stage. During the research, several data emerged, including one that showed the migration of the entire community to another area of the island. This information was shared by chapter member and geography student at the Universidade Estadual do Amazonas, Paula Souza da Silva. She is a resident of São Luís do Macari village, the community that migrated, and has contact with residents of other communities who share information with her.
The island's villages suffer from the intense dynamics of the river, with the so-called "Terras Caídas". This process is the erosion of margins of the river that ends up taking entire swaths of land. That's why communities change places. Some just move their houses back, others end up moving. From this reality, two other professors - Dr. Múcio do Amaral Figueiredo and Dr. Leonardo Cristian Rocha, in the field of geomorphology, were invited to assist the study. The data obtained through the LandSat time series, together with the data downloaded from the platform of the community's residences in two different years, showed an advance of water from rivers of more than 1 km. This advance over time led to the water reaching the community.
Furthermore, the data mapped by chapter members' make these villages to be seen on the OpenStreetMap platform and in other platforms that use it as a base: like the Centro de Sensoriamento Remoto (CSR Maps) da Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Doctors Without Borders, World Bank Group, United States Agency for International Development, United Nations, Clinton Health Access, among others.
Help us to map and contribute to make people visible on the map in the links below:
About the Author:
Ana Luisa Teixeira is a final year student in Geosciences at the Universidade Federal de São João del-Rei/Brazil. She is leader of UAIGeo chapter and participates in the mapping of riparian areas in the municipality of Tefé in the State of Amazonas/Brazil.