Influence of the urban scheme on the increase of eolic processes in the City of Fiambalá, Catamarca, Argentina

The Fiambalá District as part of the Catamarca Province, Argentina, is, in general, a region characterized by an environment with dry arid and semiarid conditions. Due to this situation, it is part of an extensive territory considered at world level by the Commission for the Struggle against Desertification and PNUMA, among other organizations, as fragile areas with a tendency to desertification. Furthermore, if we also consider the addition of centuries of human unrestricted and uncontrolled occupation, it now results in a vulnerable landscape in relation to the impacts of the diverse degradation processes affecting these regions.
Besides, during the development of the population settlement, the urban scheme was growing in a spontaneous way, lacking any kind of planning. Nowadays, due to the expansion of the urban areas, particularly in peripheral zones, the city has moved forward over lands with poor vegetation, on which the deforestation that accompanies urban settlements generates sensitive surfaces in front of the eolic activity, increasing the deflation and sediment-transport processes. Thus, the dune system has been destabilized causing, on the one hand, the advance of the dunes over the houses and farming areas, and, on the other hand, the decapitation of the arable soils.
In order to assess and mitigate the impact of the mobility of the dunes the following tasks have been carried out: a) characterization of the urban écheme both past and present; b) making of the thematic cartography; c) characterization of the dune areas and the decapitated soils; d) quantification of the affected areas; e) proposal of dune attachment using autochthonous vegetation, and f) proposal of future urban development to the government authorities.