CASEST and the students of the MJ’EcoExist
Casest Angers is pleased to support this year seven undergraduate students of the MJ’EcoExist of ISTOM (engineering school in international agro-development). As part of their 4th year of study, they set up a student association, MJ’ECOEXIST, to carry out a junior expertise mission.

Their goal is to study the drivers of landscape change around protected areas. They’ll conduct a two-month fieldwork around the park of Serra Bodoquena, in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, in Brazil: from May 25 to July 21, 2019.
Thanks to satellite imagery, researchers of the CASEST project were able to determine that agriculture expansion played a major role in modifying the landscape around this park, especially around the town of Bonito. This city is one of the twenty largest tourist destinations in Brazil thanks to the promotion of its natural sites, allowing to develop a form of ecotourism. The MJ’Ecoexist will therefore seek to understand the different types of agricultural systems and tourism activities practiced in the region, as well as the expectations of stakeholders and their vision of the place of natural ressources in the economy.
Data will be collected through interviews with stakeholders at different levels of several farms and tourist systems. In order to have a complete vision and verify our hypothesis, they will also conduct interviews with the administrative authorities of the region.