Dinâmica temporal da paisagem: mudanças, percepções e dificuldades de recuperação na RDS Alcobaça, área de influência da UHE Tucuruí/PA

Abstract

The construction and operation of the Tucuruí dam caused negative landscape changes, which are accentuated by the installation of rural communities on the islands and on the lake‘s shores. The increasing reduction of forest vegetation, the biodiversity loss, the increase of socio-cultural conflicts and the landscape fragmentation detected in the dam influence area, prove that ecosystems and human population have not reached an equilibrium. With the creation of conservation units in 2002, environmental problems were expected to reduce in intensity and magnitude. However, the socio-environmental crisis remained unchanged. Given this scenario, the study seeks to understand if a) the perception of the landscape changes in the Alcobaça Sustainable Development Reserve – SDR – are similar according to the local knowledge and the scientific evidences; b) the use and management of natural resources by local dwellers influence the landscape transformations in the area; and finally c) ethnobotany in local communities presents potential for the management and control of ecosystem degradations. The methodological assumption implicates proper techniques of Participatory Rural Appraisal – PRA –, supplemented with non-participatory techniques of vegetation cover interpretation. The selection of this study area is due to the fact that the Alcobaça SDR presents the most fragmented landscape and the largest population concentration in relation to other protection units. The oral memory of fishermen shows that the landscape changes are associated with natural resources management changes, encouraging the development of predation methods as a response to the current resources shortage. Although local communities express knowledge about damage on the ecosystems, Uncertainties linked to dwellers' land titles conflict with the management institutions of the SDR area and are often the justification of or even the motivation for a bad landscape management. Local knowledge on vegetation resources, though, does not solve the environmental crisis evidenced in the area, and is only a potential tool for the management of degraded areas. Biodiversity is locally known, not as a long list of species, but as a real knowledge built up and appropriated by local communities. It is materialized in dwellers' backyards, incipient agroforestry, and therefore appropriate for the control of the environmental degradation.