Historical Ecology in Brazil: A Systematic Mapping of Scientific Articles (1998–2021)

Abstract

Historical Ecology is a multidisciplinary field that studies long-term relationships between humanity and the environment. There is a missing synthesis effort to organize and present the state of the scholarship in Historical Ecology in Brazil. We aimed to characterize by whom, when, where, what, and how research in Historical Ecology has been conducted in Brazil. We made a systematic mapping of 118 scientific articles published in Portuguese, Spanish, and English that fit our inclusion criteria. The results showed articles from 1998 to May 2021, published in 79 different journals. We found 264 national and international authors (60% men and 40%women); 91% of all investigations were carried out in the Amazon and Atlantic Forest biomes. There are few works about Cerrado, Caatinga, and Pampa, and none for Pantanal. The most mentioned keywords were historical ecology, Amazon, forest, and archaeology. Twenty-three articles focused on a particular species, primarily plants; 37% of all articles used Historical Ecology as its central axis of research, and 63% as auxiliary. We found more than 35 methodological procedures, both from the social and natural sciences. This overview revealed achievements, research gaps, and opportunities in this field.

Creative Economy: A Worldwide Research in Business, Management and Accounting

“…Additionally, it lists the broad study themes and most popular topics [100]. Furthermore, numerous studies have used this analysis in various academic disciplines, such as management [101][102][103] and environment [104][105][106], among others [107,108]. For these reasons, this study uses bibliometric tools to analyze the scientific structure of the creative economy field.…”

Historical Ecology, Archaeology and Biocultural Landscapes: Cross-Disciplinary Approaches to the Long Anthropocene

“…Four articles regard different parts of Europe, including the French Pyrenees [13], Scandinavia [14] and Slovenia [15]. The remaining studies address [16], California/French Polynesia [17] and a review on Brazil [18]. This demonstrates the global interest in the topic of Historical Ecology.…”

“…Even beyond Europe, historical ecology has had various thematic developments and interdisciplinary applications as presented by Lazos-Ruíz et al's [18] review regarding Brazil. Brazilian historical ecology is shown to be an interdisciplinary field in which environmental sciences, anthropology, and archeology meet to address issues such as the impact of European colonization in landscape transformations (especially of Amazon and Atlantic Forest biomes) and also in highlighting the great role played by Brazilian ethnic diversity, even if some geographic areas (such as Pantanal, Caatinga, Pampa, and Cerrado biomes) still need to be better investigated, as well as issues concerning animal species or seascapes.…”

Historical Ecology, Archaeology and Biocultural Landscapes: Cross-Disciplinary Approaches to the Long Anthropocene

“…Four articles regard different parts of Europe, including the French Pyrenees [13], Scandinavia [14] and Slovenia [15]. The remaining studies address [16], California/French Polynesia [17] and a review on Brazil [18]. This demonstrates the global interest in the topic of Historical Ecology.…”