The State of the Art of Physical Geography in the Northeast and North of Brazil

Abstract

The Northeast and North regions of Brazil present peculiarities regarding their academic production in physical geography as compared to the rest of the country, mainly derived from the history of implementation of undergraduate, and especially postgraduate courses in geography, as well as due to the training trajectories of researchers. A comprehensive consultation was carried out on bibliographic production online databases and data collection platforms of the graduate and undergraduate programs in geography of both regions, covering a period between 2007 and 2017, in order to identify professionals who pursue the theme, the character of their academic training and the qualitative and quantitative assessment of their scientific production. It is concluded that the strong concentration of publications in the areas of environmental analysis and geomorphology point to a transition in favor of more applied approaches, aimed at solving problems and emerging issues that involve the relationship of society with its various physical supports. It is also observed that the methodological developments and insertion capacity of the scientific output of physical geography practitioners in both regions are in keeping with the state of the art of the science, both nationally and internationally, and that the works produced privilege the Inter-institutional cooperation between national and foreign research groups