Environmental vulnerability assessment of the Doce River basin, southeastern Brazil

Environmental vulnerability is an important tool to understand the natural and anthropogenic impacts associated with the susceptibility to environmental damage. This study aims to assess the environmental vulnerability of the Doce River basin in Brazil through Multicriteria Decision Analysis based on Geographic Information Systems (GIS-MCDA). Natural factors (slope, elevation, relief dissection, rainfall, pedology, and geology) and anthropogenic factors (distance from urban centers, roads, mining dams, and land use) were used to determine the environmental vulnerability index (EVI). The EVI was classified into five classes, identifying associated land uses. Vulnerability was verified in water resource management units (UGRHs) and municipalities using hot spot analysis. The study employed the water quality index (WQI) to assess the EVI and global sensitivity analysis (GSA) to evaluate the model input parameters that most influence the basin's environmental vulnerability. The results showed that the regions near the middle Doce River were considered environmentally more vulnerable, especially the UGRHs Guandu, Manhuaçu, and Caratinga; and 35.9% of the basin has high and very high vulnerabilities. Hot spot analysis identified regions with low EVI values (cold spot) in the north and northwest, while areas with high values (hot spot) were concentrated mainly in the middle Doce region. Water monitoring stations with the worst WQI values were found in the most environmentally vulnerable areas. The GSA determined that land use and slope were the primary factors influencing the model's response. The results of this study provide valuable information for supporting environmental planning in the Doce River basin.

Factors Influencing Use of Fitness Apps by Adults under Influence of COVID-19

During the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, many countries imposed restrictions and quarantines on the population, which led to a decrease in people's physical activity (PA) and severely damaged their mental health. As a result, people engaged in fitness activities with the help of fitness apps, which improved their resistance to the virus and reduced the occurrence of psychological problems, such as anxiety and depression. However, the churn rate of fitness apps is high. As such, our purpose in this study was to analyze the factors that influence the use of fitness apps by adults aged 18-65 years in the context of COVID-19, with the aim of contributing to the analysis of mobile fitness user behavior and related product design practices. We constructed a decision target program model using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), and we analyzed and inductively screened 11 evaluation indicators, which we combined with an indicator design questionnaire. We distributed 420 questionnaires; of the respondents, 347 knew about or used fitness apps. Among these 347, we recovered 310 valid questionnaires after removing invalid questionnaires with a short completion time, for an effective questionnaire recovery rate of 89.33%. We used the AHP and entropy method to calculate and evaluate the weight coefficient of each influencing factor and to determine an influencing factor index. Our conclusions were as follows: first, the effect of perceived usefulness on the use of fitness apps by the study groups was the most notable. Second, personal motivation and perceived ease of use considerably influenced the adult group's willingness to use fitness apps. Finally, the perceived cost had relatively little effect on the use of fitness apps by adults, and the study group was much more concerned with the privacy cost than the expense cost.

Effects of environmental protection policies on fragile areas of a watershed occupied by agriculture in the Brazilian Cerrado

Brazil has become an antagonist in natural resource conservation policies in recent years. The Brazilian Cerrado is one of the biomes most affected by this setback due to the occupation of areas of economic interest in agriculture. Interestingly, there are projects throughout the biome that aim to encourage the preservation of natural resources, but there is uncertainty about whether these incentives have provided conservation. That is the case of the Feio River hydrographic basin, located in the Cerrado, near the city of Patrocínio, state of Minas Gerais. Indeed, the Feio River watershed has projects incentivizing the Cerrado's conservation. Thus, in this article, we aimed to explain how the advance of agriculture in fragile areas of the Feio river watershed occurs, their causes and whether protection strategies have produced satisfactory results. We used an old Environmental Fragility proposal methodwith our contributions to estimate the variations regarding nature conservation in the basin. Our findings show considerable heterogeneity in the potential fragility of the Feio's river basin. We observe that less fragile sites are used for coffee cultivation (74 and 72% of the two places), while more fragile sites are occupied by reserves (around 50% of the area) and high-impact activities such as traditional monoculture and cattle ranching (25 and 44% for the two sites). Temporally, we observed little change in use and occupation, with a slight increase in no-till farming to replace coffee and conventional cultivation. The permanent preservation areas in the basin have improved vegetation quality, while the reserve areas composed of fields show a degradation process. Considering the importance of the Feio's river basin, different incentives and inspection strategies are needed to guarantee the site's preservation and environmental restoration.

Mapping the Optimal Rural Areas to Invest in through the LEADER Approach: Case Study—Extremadura (SW Spain)

For more than 30 years, the LEADER approach has been a key tool in the endogenous, local, participatory, and sustainable development of the most disadvantaged European rural areas in demographic and socioeconomic terms. However, despite the unquestionable labor of the rural development policy and the local action groups, various authors, both at a European level and at a national level, in Spain, have concluded that the majority of investments and the greater number of projects through LEADER have been concentrated in the most populated and most developed rural areas. For this reason, there is positive discrimination toward them in the management of aid for rural development. Knowing this and according to the objectives pursued by LEADER, the aim of this work is to analyze the situation in Extremadura (Spain), which has been a beneficiary from the beginning, building an optimal location model for rural development aid. Thus, it will be possible to determine the most convenient, optimal, or priority municipalities to receive aid for rural development due to characteristics such as a smaller population, low demographic growth, low birth rate, high mortality rate, high aging population, low productivity index, high unemployment rates, low accessibility to urban centers, and low LEADER investments in recent years.