Carla Idely Palencia-Aguilar
Central Florida University, USA
Title: ENVIRONMENTAL AND ECONOMIC SUSTAINABILITY IN ADVERSE CONDITIONS
Biography
Biography: Carla Idely Palencia-Aguilar
Abstract
Very few examples of operating projects that integrate social, economic, environmental, technical and ecological aspects in developing economies, with multiple adverse conditions: climate change, political issues, low income, skepticism, wrong conceived governmental regulations for mining operations, and so on, could be found.
This work includes determination of optimal land use by multi-criteria analysis with three main variables: geostatistics, evapotranspiration and groundwater characteristics. It also uses indicators such as NDVI to proof how the mining interventions had improved the characteristics of the zone, how risk assessment and risk management are key components for environmental sustainability and how innovative techniques in dehydration could add value to agriculture, silviculture and cattle raising products from rehabilitated zones to assure economic sustainability.
The use of remote sensing, meteorological stations, piezometers, sunphotometers, geoelectric analysis among others; provide the information for modelling the actual situation and predict future needs. Temporality aspects from MODIS and ASTER images are also included not only for agriculture applications but also for water resource management and water quality assurance.
Organic Agriculture applications have been tested with different products such as Goldenberry and Quinoa, both with international demand. Zeodratation is used to dehydrate the products by means of pressure changes and zeolites that behave as adsorbant and as molecular sieve selectors of water versus nutrient content. Thousands of experiments in the past 8 years have been taking place in order to define the best quality and most efficient curve per tested product. The results show healthier products with concentrated vitamin and antioxidant contents.