Problematizando as representações do mundo natural como delimitação espacial em história ambiental: entre a Araucarilândia e a Floresta Ombrófila Mista

Abstract

This article seeks to understand how the Araucaria Forest was understood as a homogeneous forest in the first half of the Twentieth Century as heterogeneous and at the end of the century, for, from this example, discuss the spatial delimitation in environmental history. It is not here for a history of scientific controversies, how the first ratings as “Araucarilandia” moved to the current Mixed Ombrophilous Forest (“Floresta Ombrófila Mista – FOM”), but to address sources of techno-bureaucracy, government and business, to understand the change in the forest representation. The conclusions point out that the technical conditions of economic exploitation for export of Araucaria Forest led to highlight their relative homogeneity, so it was not just a difference in tree composition, in addition, the apparatus of “rationalization” tended to reduce forest its economic dimension. Since the heterogeneity of the Araucaria Forest is not just the result of a careful study of biogeography, but follows a trend of appreciation of socio-biodiversity, with environmental debates of the second half of the Twentieth Century. Which brings us to postulate that the spatial boundaries of every good historical narrative must be built with the search problem and not be a given a priori.