Efeito do contato com florestas urbanas no conhecimento de crianças sobre a biodiversidade

Abstract

When interacting with nature, human beings perceive the world around them, conceptualizing biotic and abiotic components with which it interacts. However, these interaçãos are being weakened by the expansion of anthropic environments on natural areas. The extinction of experience, a phenomenon caused by the lack of contact of people with nature, can in particular have negative effects on the formation of concepts on the environment of children. Therefore, it is necessary to understand both the effect of contact with forests in the biological knowledge of children and the way they relate and realize natural environments over the old stages. This can be seen by taking the study of Environmental Perception. This dissertation focuses ethnobiological aspects when conservation, focusing on the possible effects of contact children with forests on the knowledge of it, considering also the influence of cognitive development in this knowledge. For this, children at different ages, in contact and no contact with forests, were encouraged to draw all they knew about them. The results indicate that contact with forests generated a greater knowledge of native animals and, on the other hand, the lack of contact directed the children to exhibit more non-native animals and human objects. Clearly, the contact with natural environments shaped the forest knowledge of children, which is more true to reality the next local forests where they live. Moreover, the perception including a large number of components human in forests and non-native animals, demonstrate that the distance of the forest can limit or distort children's knowledge about the same. As regards the effect of age, it was noted that older children had a more systemic knowledge of a forest, showing both abiotic components, animals and plants than younger children. In this regard, we emphasize the importance of understanding how age may hold the knowledge of children, mainly on the perspective of environmental education. From this study, we found that contact with forests can directly influence the knowledge of children. Therefore, maintaining green areas near urban environments is extremely important to encourage knowledge of the local biodiversity.