Environmental awareness of coastal erosion impact and contention work (bagwall) on a beach on the coast of northeast brazil

Abstract

The process of erosion is increasingly affecting the beaches along the coast of the Ceará State, in the northeast of Brazil. During the last decade, the coastal erosion has caused negative economic impacts upon the users of the Icaraí Beach, an important tourist destination in the municipality of Caucaia-CE. In 2010, the City Hall built a contention work of the bagwall kind as a control measure, but the tide strength partially destroyed it. The present study had as goal to carry out a diagnostic of the perception of the Icaraí Beach’s users about the coastal erosion and the adopted contention measures. To do that, we applied a semi-structured questionnaire to a random sample of 556 users aiming to assess their perception towards the landscape quality, the impacts of the coastal erosion and of the contention work (bagwall). The results showed that the users attributed the coastal erosion to the works done along the coast of Fortaleza City that extended the erosion process to the beaches located at the west coast. The users showed to be unsatisfied with the contention work done, mainly due to the inadequacy of the work to the local environmental condition.