Os fundamentos epistemológicos da Ecologia da Paisagem aplicada à Amazônia de Hilgard O’Reilly Sternberg (1917-2011)

Abstract

For brazilian geographic science, the 1950s had a unique importance: that of consolidating and internationalizing the academic research that began between 19301940, a period in which university courses in Geography emerged in Brazil. With that, the first geographers trained in the country began to stand out years later, taking an interest in the most diverse subjects. In addition, the Brazilian State, through its research promotion institutions, also gave prestige to areas of science that could work in some way with territorial planning, that is, from the perspective of Planning Geography, which had to do with with the crystallization of the idea of a Modern State. Thus, the development of geographic science in Brazil was aligned with the strategic interests of the State, especially within the following themes: agriculture, soil, water resources and tropical medicine. Furthermore, during the 1950s, the XVIII International Congress of Geography took place in Rio de Janeiro, an event in which young Brazilian geographers were able to expose their research to a select group of internationally renowned scientists. Faced with this historical plot formed in the country, and having the need to rescue a prominent character in the history of Brazilian geographic science, the main objective of this thesis is to identify the epistemological foundations of Landscape Ecology applied to the Amazon by Hilgard O'Reilly Sternberg. For this, it was decided to select the work A Água e o Homem na várzea do Careiro (1956), as well as complementary documents (academic articles, opinion articles in periodicals, congress minutes, telegrams, etc.) that orbited around the selected search object