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Further Reflections on Amazonian Environmental History: Transformations of Rivers and Streams

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2022

Hugh Raffles  and
Antoinette M.G.A. WinklerPrins
Hugh Raffles
Affiliation:
University of California, Santa Cruz
Antoinette M.G.A. WinklerPrins
Affiliation:
Michigan State University
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Abstract

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Despite the increasing sensitivity of researchers to historical and contemporary landscape manipulations in the Amazon basin, there is still a powerful consensus in both popular and scholarly literatures that, with the exception of predatory deforestation, the physical environment of the region is largely unmodified by human intervention. An emerging body of scholarship has challenged this view by describing ways that Amazonian populations have managed terrestrial ecosystems on a variety of spatial and temporal scales. In this research report, we present both new and previously published data showing that Amazonians also intervene in fluvial systems, manipulating rivers and streams to modify the landscape. We argue that these practices, occurring in many different forms, are widespread and commonplace throughout the region, and that, taken together with the emerging evidence for terrestrial manipulation, provide compelling reason for a fundamental reassessment of conventional views of Amazonian nature.

Type
Research Reports and Notes
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 38 , Issue 3 , 2003 , pp. 165 - 187
Copyright
Copyright © 2003 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

∗

Our sincere thanks to the residents of Igarapé Guariba and Ilha Ituqui. In addition, for insightful comments on an earlier version of this paper, we are grateful to Bill Denevan and to the three reviewers from this journal. Thanks also to David Cleary, Susanna Hecht, Joe McCann, Christine Padoch, Miguel Pinedo-Vásquez, Fernando Rabelo, Michael Reynolds, Bill Woods and Dan Zarin. Writing of this paper was facilitated by faculty research funds granted by the University of California, Santa Cruz (to Raffles) and from the generous support of the National Science Foundation, the Association of American Geographers, the American Association of University Women, IPAM/ Projeto Várzea (Santarém) and ITC-International Institute for Aerospace Survey and Earth Sciences (to WinklerPrins).

References

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