The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential of Minecraft’s game environment for urban planning with older and younger children in a public school in Tirol town, Brazil. Minecraft is employed as an innovative tool to tackle the present lack of engagement and involvement of key societal actors such as children and young people in urban planning. Thus, how can games support children to co-design their future city? Which heritage values do they represent graphically in the game environment? Geogames are games that provide a visualization of a real spatial context and in this study, Minecraft is the tool which we use to explore youth engagement. We designed two experiments, which tested Minecraft as a geogame environment for engaging young people in urban planning. These experiments were conducted with children, who emerged as active emancipated actors to bring their values to the planning practice. The playtesting results revealed the potential of Minecraft to keep children engaged in the design workshop, as well as their relevant ludic ability to co-create walkable, green, and interactive places. New research questions arose about the potential of creating a culture of planning among children in order to motivate other social actors to share responsibilities for sustainable development and management.

This chapter concentrates on the implementation of the geogame GeoMi-nasCraft and its use for geographical virtual explorations. The game was implemented to study the use of geospatial data for the visualizations of landscapes in a serious game. The users/players can take on an adventure, explore the landscapes, learn about geodiversity, and face different challenges. The game takes us to the City of Ouro Preto in Minas Gerais in Brazil. The city was selected due to its historical significance and socio-cultural values. We used satellite images and transformed them into blocks imitating these real-world landscapes and cities in Minecraft. We tested the game prototype with nine students which gave us the needed feedback for the improvements of the first prototype. This chapter summarizes the game concept, its implementation, and the testing results. We conclude the chapter with a discussion and further research directions. IntroductionAlthough research on the use of gaming for serious purposes has increased recently (Anderson et al. 2010), the use of digital games to support geoconservation purposes,

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O município de Nova Lima, em Minas Gerais, está localizado em área de grandes elevações altimétricas e declives acentuados. O município compõe a franja sul da Região Metropolitana de Belo Horizonte e, sendo fronteira com a capital, tornou-se território de expressivo valor imobiliário. Por outro lado, Nova Lima integra a região do Quadrilátero ferrífero que destaca-se no cenário nacional pela grande riqueza mineral, especialmente ferro, ouro e manganês. O espraiamento e a verticalização urbana encontram-se lado-a-lado com a mineração, e ambos disputam espaço com elementos de interesse ambiental e de paisagem cultural, o que motiva a melhor compreensão do território e a análise diagnóstica e prognóstica das condições de risco geológico. O Índice de Risco Geológico é apresentado no trabalho como um método aplicável por tecnologias de geoprocessamento que tem como objetivo o subsídio para a tomada de decisões sobre a expansão urbana da região, e pode ser indicado como um modelo de análise espacial aplicável a outros estudos de caso no Brasil, como suporte ao planejamento territorial de áreas caracterizadas por relevo e substrato geológico complexo.

O desenvolvimento dos ideais conservacionistas e o surgimento de modalidades turísticas como o ecoturismo e o geoturismo ampliou o interesse das populações urbanas por áreas naturais. Esse acréscimo de visitação em áreas de preservação ambiental é positivo em relação à divulgação dos patrimônios biótico e abiótico. Contudo, o acesso a este tipo de atrativo é feito principalmente através de trilhas, e a intensificação da utilização das mesmas podem atuar como vetores de propagação de diversos desequilíbrios ambientais, tais como exposição, compactação e erosão do solo. Para entender estes processos de degradação de trilhas foi utilizada como área de estudo a trilha do Carteiro, localizada na APA Serra São José, no município de Tiradentes, Minas Gerais. A análise se baseou na utilização do método de Área Seccional Transversal (AST), e cálculo das taxas de compactação do solo no leito e nas bordas da trilha. Foram separados diversos pontos de controle ao longo da trilha, onde foi aplicada a metodologia proposta. Trechos da trilha foram analisados, obtendo-se os valores de perda de solo em centímetros quadrados e as taxas de compactação em megapascal.Palavras-chave: Trilhas, geoturismo, ast, erosão e compactação do solo. Abstract: SOIL DEGRADATION ALONG A TRAIL DESTINATION ATTRACTIVES OF THE SERRA DE SÃO JOSÉ GEOTOURISTIC MONUMENT, TIRADENTES COUNTY, MINAS GERAIS STATE, BRAZIL. The development of conservation ideal and the rise of tourist modalities such as ecotourism and geotourism increased the interest of urban populations for natural areas. This increase visitation in areas of environmental preservation is positive with respect to the disclosure of biotic and abiotic heritage. However, access to this type of attraction is mostly done through trails, and the increasing use of them can act as vectors for the spread of many environmental disturbances, such as exposure, compaction and soil erosion. To understand these processes of degradation of trails was used as the study area of the Carteiro trail, located at Serra São José Environmental Protection Area, in the Tiradentes county, Minas Gerais, Brazil. The analysis is based on the use of the method of Cross Sectional Area (CSA), and estimation of soil compaction in the bed and on the edges of the trail. Were separated several checkpoints along the trail, where the methodology proposed was applied. These sections were analyzed, yielding values of soil loss in square centimeters and compaction rates in megapascals.Key-words: Trail, geoturism, csa, erosion and soil compaction.

Today, in some Brazilian cities, there is the possibility of using high-resolution data and automated classification based on spectral bands. Thus, this article aims to evaluate the association of the NDVI(normalized difference vegetation index) to the use of LiDAR, in order to analyze urban vegetation cover and the changes of the local landscapes. It was observed that the association of the high spatial resolution of an aerophotogrammetric image to the spectral response in the near infrared range allowed the vegetation to be identified. This enabled the documentation, visualization and analysis of a location's phenomenon, facilitating the investigation of spatial relationships through representation by maps, charts, especially for simulating possible spatial scenarios and thus permitting the evaluation of interventions and predictions to be made, assisting projects or proposed laws and urban parameters.

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