Alterações no uso da paisagem e seus efeitos sobre sistemas médicos locais no semiárido

Abstract

The fragmentation and modification of ecosystems has been recognized as one of the most serious threats to biodiversity. Understanding how tropical biotas respond to human pressures, including environmental changes, is a scientific challenge of global relevance and an urgent task. The environmental history linked to the management of land use, with activities with wide impact such as forestry, agriculture, livestock and modifications of natural disturbance regimes (such as fire), shape the conditions of ecosystem landscapes over time. The landscape, in an ethnobiological perspective, will be the result of the interaction of the human being, the culture and the ecosystem, and it is important to understand how its management has compromised the diversity and use of therapeutic resources, and how this process has contributed with what will be selected for cultural resource use systems, these elements shaping the ecological scenario of resource availability. The management of the natural landscape for different forms of local practices can modify natural landscapes and alter the selective forces that act on the plant resources used. Management alters the richness and diversity of plant species primarily, which consequently can alter the diversity of available resources, and these actions can be better seen when looking at their expressions in socio-ecological systems, such as local medical systems.