Fortaleza City is the capital of Ceará State, Northeast of Brazil. It has 314 km² of area and approximately 2,5 million people, being the fifth city of Brazil in population and the bigger demographic density (8,000 hab/km²). In the environmental point of view, it is a coastal city that exposes 35 km of a tropical littoral with beaches, dunes and small estuaries. In relation to the dunes, thermo-luminescence dating indicated it is has around 2,200 years. The paper characterizes the dunefields in a natural point of view, in the sense that locally, they are typically formed by barchans and parabolic forms, showing a singular evolution, from barchans to parabolics. Fortaleza city, though tropical, has a semi-arid weather tendency, and the dunes are important ecological agents: it allows the development of ponds, as well as large water tables, which make rivers permanent and forbid urban floods. Dune's tropical vegetation cover shelters species of aquatic and continental fauna. This paper also relates the social mobilization engendered in view to preserve 15 ha of dunes situated in a important real state area. The action was victorious, representing the first time that preservation won against urban soil speculation, as the result of an interesting relationship established between diverse social groups.
Coastal dunes; Nature and society relationship; Greens environmental action; Coastal Geomorphology; Brazilian North-east
