Bacias Hidrográficas e Ensino de Geografia: percepções ambientais sobre as inundações urbanas na Bacia do Rio Alcântara, São Gonçalo – RJ

Abstract

Nowadays, the debate on environmental impacts in large Brazilian cities has emerged more and more. In this sense, it is essential to work on this theme in Geography classes, considering that geographic education allows to lead knowledge as a subsidy to the action of students in the place where they live and of society in general. This becomes, therefore, a possibility for students to get closer to their reality so that they can then understand and reflect critically from the perspective of transformation. In turn, the hydrographic basins of the municipality of São Gonçalo, in the metropolitan east of Rio de Janeiro, have been suffering several environmental impacts. In particular, the Alcântara River Basin, the largest basin in the region, is the one that suffers the most from this phenomenon. It is worth mentioning that the occurrence of this is related both to the geomorphological characteristics of the basin and to the various anthropic interferences reached in the same. That said, the environmental perception stands out as a tool of great relevance for geographic education, since from it is possible to bring to the citizen who occupies these spaces - and who takes advantage of it - the conscience that is also part of the its dynamics. Thus, the present work aims to analyze the environmental perceptions of students, from the 1st year of high school at CIEP 439 Luiz Gonzaga Júnior, about urban flooding in the Alcântara River basin. The school is located between the rivers: Alcântara - principal and its affluent Mutondo, which also suffers from floods, affecting students' lives. In order to carry out the work, the Case Study research approach was used as the methodology, as it conceives knowledge as a process socially constructed by the subjects. This methodology seeks to integrate the content and the reality of the students in order to associate the natural, social and political components of the municipality's basin. To build the research, four didactic proposals were used, namely: activity 1: conceptual map on urban floods; activity 2: mind maps; activity 3: group interviews and activity 4: use of images of the Alcântara River by Google Earth. Thus, the results point to a socio-environmental environmental perception, because they link the greater responsibility of floods to human beings and their degradation actions to the referred basin. Correlated to this, it was noticed that the students have a representation of the environment as a problem, since man is conceived as a predator. Regarding the conceptions of environmental education, it can be inferred that they have an environmental-systemic view, as they were aware that this phenomenon integrates not only natural factors, but also political, economic, cultural factors and environmental. However, in relation to geographic education, it was noted that students have many difficulties in associating the scales of analysis, since they make a great separation between the basins of Brazil (national scale) with those of the municipality of São Gonçalo (local scale).