Vera Lopes

University of Lisbon | UL · Department of Geology

Laksar is a small river near the village of Ksar Seghir, located between Tangier and Ceuta (Morocco), strategic points to control the Strait of Gibraltar over centuries. The river outlets at the western part of a sandy beach that can block the fluvial discharge in years of low precipitation/river flow. The area is densely occupied since the 5th cen...

Coastal ecosystems like mangroves, seagrasses, and tidal salt marshes are known as Blue Carbon storage places. These places work as carbon sinks by trapping atmospheric carbon in the biomass (Leaving Aboveground biomass (LAB), Non leaving Aboveground biomass (NLAB) (litter-death plant) and Leaving belowground biomass (LBB) (root and rhizome)) and o...

Salt marshes are highly valued coastal environments for different services: coastline protection, biodiversity, and blue carbon. They are vulnerable to climate changes, particularly to sea-level rise. For this reason, it is essential to project the evolution of marsh areas until the end of the century. This work presents a reduced complexity model...

Coastal environments like tidal marshes and flats are very important as they support enormous biodiversity and provide several services such as coastline protection, retention of pollutants, and organic carbon sequestration, having considerable potential to mitigate climate change. The study of these ecosystems is of huge importance to know their d...

Marshes are one of the three (mangroves, marshes, and seagrasses) most critical coastal ecosystems for carbon sequestration and storage. They are essential for coastal preservation as they provide numerous ecosystem services that support coastal communities worldwide and have considerable potential to mitigate climate change. Organic carbon sequest...

Apresentamos uma primeira abordagem sobre a paisagem submersa do porto de Olisipo e a sua evolução durante o período de ocupação romana, nomeadamente nas zonas actualmente correspondentes ao Terreiro do Paço e Ribeira das Naus. Este modelo da paisagem é construído com base na análise de vários indicadores ambientais obtidos em sondagens de sediment...

No âmbito do projecto Lisbon Stories recolheram-se em contexto de obra amostras de sedimento da antiga margem estuarina do Tejo. Os sedimentos foram analisados para diversos proxies e a interpretação dos resultados contribuiu para melhor compreender a evolução desta zona ribeirinha nos últimos milénios. Nas áreas de amostragem encontraram-se testem...

The chronological framework for Neanderthal occupation and demise across Europe continues to be debated. In particular, there is still uncertainty regarding the nature, timing and regional expressions of the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition associated with the disappearance of Neanderthals and the broader expansion of modern human population...

We examine the Holocene environmental changes in a wet dune slack of the Portuguese coast, Poço do Barbarroxa de Baixo. Lithology, organic matter, biological proxies and high-resolution chronology provide estimations of sediment accumulation rates and changes in environmental conditions in relation to sea-level change and climate variability during...

The fluvio‑estuarine beaches of downtown Lisbon during the Iron Age and Roman Period. In the aim of the Lisbon Stories project several sediment samples, both sediment cores and discrete samples, were recovered in the riverine Lisbon area. The analyses of those sediments will allow rebuilding the palaeoenvironmental evolution of the northern Tagus m...

São apresentados neste trabalho os resultados do estudo de quatro sondagens recolhidas na margem Norte do Tejo. A análise destes sedimentos permite reconstruir a paisagem e compreender a evolução paleoambiental da margem antes da construção dos grandes aterros. A sua interpretação permitiu concluir que: a sedimentação na zona subtidal mais proximal...

The maintenance of salt marsh areas in context of climate change depends on the balance between the salt marsh sedimentation rates and the sea level rise rates. This abstract presents a methodology to quantify the evolution of these areas until the end of the century, considering both parameters. The obtained result allows pointing out that the sal...

The resilience of salt marshes to climate change and sea level rise mainly depends on the balance between sedimentation rates and sea level rise rates. A model was developed to forecast how Caldeira de Tróia salt marsh will respond to that global forcing factor. The results indicate that the salt marsh can tolerate the projected rise in sea level f...

Although research focus mostly on high marshes the understanding of sedimentation rates and patterns along the whole intertidal environment is key to improve projection models in different scenarios of sea level rise (SLR). This study presents the results from the analysis of a sediment core collected in a low marsh on the North bank of Caldeira de...

Saltmarshes are essential ecosystems both from an ecological and biological point of view. Furthermore, they constitute an important social niche, providing valuable economic and protection functions. Thus, understanding their rates and patterns of sedimentation is critical for functional management and rehabilitation, especially in an SLR scenario...

The Western Massif of the Picos de Europa (43°N – 4‐5°W) includes some of the highest peaks in the Cantabrian Mountains. This massif was heavily glaciated during the Last Glaciation, though the post‐glacial environmental evolution is still poorly understood. Using a geomorphological and sedimentological approach, we have reconstructed the environme...

The distribution of Recent and Holocene Cyprideis torosa (Jones, 1850) from brackish estuaries and lagoons of mainland Portugal is presented; older Cenozoic C. torosa are also briefly mentioned. Around 550 specimens were found alive, in Melides lagoon (456) and salt marshes from large estuaries (90). Thousands of empty valves and carapaces, with di...

A 5.4 m long sediment core was collected from Belbín, a karstic depression dammed by a moraine in a mid-altitude environment in the Western Massif of the Picos de Europa of the Cantabrian Mountains, northern Spain. 14C AMS dating of the basal sediments in the core suggests that the maximum glacier advance during the last glacial cycle preceded the...

In this work we present preliminary results of the study of one sediment core (EDP1), collected near Cais do Sodré, Lisbon downtown, close to the present day Tagus riverfront. The results allowed differentiation of 4 major sediment units that present a signature of increasing anthropic influence over time. The lowermost unit (Unit 1) corresponds to...

The Western Massif of the Picos de Europa (latitude 43° N, longitude 4-5° W) includes some of the highest peaks in the Cantabrian Mountains. This massif was heavily glaciated during the Last Glaciation, though the post-glacial environmental evolution is still poorly understood. Using a complementary geomorphological and sedimentological approach, w...

In this contribution we present data from a 182 cm-long sedimentary sequence collected in the mid-altitude area of Belbín, a depression dammed by a moraine during the Last Glaciation in the Western Massif of the Picos de Europa (Cantabrian Mountains, NW Spain), in order to reconstruct the environmental changes and the conditioning factors of these...

Sedimentological, geochemical, biological and dating proxies of a SW wet dune slack (Poços do Barbaroxa de Baixo) allowed to establish major steps of environmental changes and relations with sea-level throughout the Holocene. Results of sediment analysis (organic matter, C and N elemental contents and isotopes and diatoms) suggest that the environm...

The sediments framing a ship wreckage (Ria de Aveiro A) found close to Biarritz beach (Mira channel, Aveiro lagoon, Portugal) were studied to evaluate the hidrodynamic settings contemporaneous of the wreckage and contribute to reconstruct local environmental changes. Seven short cores aligned along a cross-shore section extending from the Aveiro ba...

Msc thesis-This work aims to contribute to the improvement of the conceptual model of the Plisto-Holocene evolution of the Nazaré lowland (Pederneira paleolagoon), through the detailed characterization of its sedimentary infill and determination of the geometry and volume of the lithostratigraphic units applying 3D geological modeling. To this obje...

The Pederneira lowland, located south of Nazaré (western central Portugal), is at present an alluvial plain with a surface of 22km 2 and a maximum height of 10m (a.s.l). The paleosurface that accommodated water and sediments throughout the Holocene hasan estimated volume of about 2x10 8 m 3. In order to understand the evolution of the basin during...

Poço do Barbaroxa de Baixo (BB)is a shallow (<1m depth) and small (surface <0.4km2) open water dune slack of the SW Portuguese coast, which occasionally dries out in summer. A sediment core (330 cm) was analyzed for diatom content, TOC, TN, TS, 13C, and 15N, and an age model was constructed using AMS 14C dates. The core consists of peat and peaty...

Depositional systems such as lagoons and estuaries are natural archives of information about coastal and environmental changes that occurred in the past. In the particular case of the Portuguese coastal fringe an evolutionary model based on sedimentological, palaeoecological and geochronological data has been proposed. To improve the resolution of...

The Western Massif of the Picos de Europa includes some of the highest elevations of the Cantabrian Mountains. The maximum ice expansion in this limestone range during the last glacial cycle preceded the global Last Glacial Maximum. A 5.4 m long sedimentary sequence was collected from Belbín, a depression damned by a moraine in a mid-altitude envir...

The Western Massif of Picos de Europa includes some of the highest peaks of the Cantabrian Mountains. However, the environmental evolution in this massif since the Last Glaciation is still poorly understood. This research provides a new geochronological approach to the sequence of environmental events occurred here since the maximum expansion of gl...

ojs/index.php/apeq. 73 1. INTRODUÇÃO As zonas húmidas litorais constituem áreas privilegiadas para o estudo da evolução geomorfológica do litoral e dos fatores que nela intervêm. Ao longo das duas últimas décadas foi desenvolvido, por diversos autores, um modelo conceptual de evolução da zona costeira do território continental português desde o Últ...

The paleoenvironmental reconstruction of the Portuguese coastal wetlands is a key element for understanding the evolutionary history of the coastal zone in the recent geological past (Quaternary). Aiming to improve the evolutionary model of Nazaré lowland (Pederneira paleolagoon) during the late Pleistocene and Holocene, a 3D geological modeling ap...

The Last Glacial Maximum low stand and coeval re-incision of the Portuguese hydrographic network created the space and defined the shape of the main morphological features available to accommodate the inundation resulting from the Holocene transgression and the marine sediments deposited in tune with changing base levels. The reconstruction of the...

This study describes sedimentation associated with the tsunami generated by the Lisbon earthquake of ad 1755. It is argued here that the tsunami deposited a sand sheet across the Lagoa dos Salgados (central Algarve, Portugal), that is intercalated with late-Holocene estuarine/lagoonal sediments. A wide range of proxies (sedimentological, exoscopic...

Microtextures in quartz attributed to aeolian transport, principally bulbous edges and abrasion fatigue have seldom been tested in the laboratory under controlled conditions. A wind tunnel experiment was conducted, using glass spheres (> 70% SiO2) as a proxy for quartz, with the objective of determining the extent of mechanical damage to silica/gla...

RESUMO: O preenchimento sedimentar holocénico da Lagoa dos Salgados (Armação de Pêra) contém uma lâmina arenosa singular intercalada em sedimentos lodosos, cuja caracterização sedimentológica, paleoecológica e geométrica sugere associação a um evento excepcional de inundação marinha. As características do depósito são típicas de inundação tsunamigé...

ABSTRACT: The sedimentological and foraminiferal study of a core collected in the western margin of Oualidia Lagoon (Morocco) allowed the characterization of the environmental evolution of this area. The sedimentation registers a sequence resultant of lagoonal silting-up with materials typical of highenergy environment and full marine influence at...