Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

The initial step of the research project “Spatial analysis and evaluation of areas of environmental, productive and patrimonial potential conflicts before the urban expansion in the Luján river basin (Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina)” consisted in updating the delimitation of the study area. In order to carry out this task a theoretical-methodological sequence was drawn up, which involved the analysis of historical cartography, mapping using computer-aided cartography (CAC), definition of boundaries using digital image processing (DIP) through digital elevation models (DEM) and realization of the geographic database through Geographical Information Systems (GIS) linked to Virtual Earth and Digital Globes. The present work presents theoretical and methodological aspects that allow to exemplify the sequence with detail in the high basin area, as much in cartographic aspects as in images obtained in the field work with GPS. The total of the task presents clear aspects of the link between traditional procedures and the current Geographical Information Technologies (GIT) used in the regional construction and thematic representation of the results.

The objective of the research was to evaluate the development of the discipline of geography with respect to fundamental knowledge and skills to be attained in 8th grade students. Basic and 4th. Middle. The curricular study confirms the undervaluation of the discipline in comparison to the area of history which, according to the reviewed literature, allows to deduce that the thematic-programmatic proposals are outdated and the learning designs decontextualized. We evaluated students from municipal and subsidized educational institutions in Valparaíso, Viña del Mar and San Felipe (n = 428), after elaborating, validating and applying an instrument focused on the cognitive area of knowledge and understanding of contents, simulated situations analysis and application Of contextualized fundamental knowledge, in addition to expressing the degree of security in the response, denoted only acceptable levels of knowledge (Total success = 32%) and low security indexes in the responses. The answers focus on contextualized questions spatially or temporally.

Included in the work “Compendio della Storia geografica, naturale e civile del Regno del Chile”, published anonymously in 1776 by the then ex-Jesuit Juan Ignacio Molina, were several maps, plans, and engravings. Although attributed to Molina, the illustrations, and specifically a map of Chile and a plan of the city of Santiago, were signed by Giovanni Fabbri. The reason for attributing them to Molina, despite his not being a cartographer, is due to his likely being the intellectual author of the work and coincides with his knowledge of the represented areas. As a result, the name of the artist, Fabbri, who had never been in Chile, receded into the background. However, a recent discovery of additional manuscripts has revealed that the aforementioned illustrations were created by a diff erent artist, Giussepe Mancini, who was able to depict both the territory of the government and its capital, following the instructions of the Chilean priest. That is to say, Molina entrusted the science of cartography to the portrayal and imagination of an intellectual who remembered his homeland from exile.

We study the fluctuations seven North Ice Field glaciers and their relationship with decadal climatic variations post Little Ice Age, through bibliography, interpretation of cartographic documents, aerial photographs, satellite images and terrain surveys. Decadal climatic variations are obtained from the records of Puerto Aysén and Balmaceda meteorological stations. Widespread, continuous and synchronous glacial regression on both slopes of the icefield is observed, disturbed only by small advances in the 1920s and 1940s. Since 1972 precipitation has declined and temperatures have increased; simultaneously the rate of glacial retreat accelerates, culminating with a collapse of much of the glacial fronts in the 1990s. The geomorphological eff ects of the glacial retreat is setting a new proglacial geomorphology and danger zones associated with paraglacial processes.

Through a bibliographic and ethnographic approach to four Map Rooms or Map Collections in Santiago, Chile, we discuss the visibilization of cartographic material. We study the following Map Rooms: Mapoteca, Archivo Nacional; Mapoteca, Biblioteca Nacional, Mapoteca, Facultad de Arquitectura y Urbanismo, Universidad de Chile; and Mapoteca, Instituto Geográfico Militar. According to our undersanding, this visibilization is informed by a particular understanding of the nature of maps as well as by the material mediations involved in the ways maps are presented to the their public. Thus Map Rooms off er specific cartographic landscapes to those who consult them, as maps appear to the public in specific configurations of figure, background and framing.

Relating cartography to science and politics, the first map of republican Chile, delineated by Claudio Gay and commissioned by the State in the mid-1830s, is interpreted as the expression of an institutional project through which the organizers of the republic projected their work towards the future. In this context, the map is understood not only as a mean to shape and represent the territory, but above all, as a political instrument that anticipates the national reality that was shaped during the nineteenth century.

It is discussed the territorial-environmental conflict in Santa Fe and Entre Ríos, emerged on the occasion of the Paraná Medio hydroelectric project during the 1990s and its resolution in favor of the opposition coalition. It is argued that this triumph was due, in large part, to specific conditions of global and national context, but also to unusual characteristics that have adopted local environmental organizations so far in Argentina. Using a qualitative methodology, based on interviews and documentary sources, we inquire into the discursive production around the project in the context of two processes driven in Argentina in that decade: the installation of neo-liberalism as hegemonic political and economic ideology, and the emergence of environmentalism as a frame of reference and condensing social force of territorial claims.

The dynamics of regional transformation of cities in Latin America in the last decades represents an important challenge for regionalization, according to the space of flows and dynamics of exchange of goods and services, the generation of rural-urban and population migratory processes Floating between urban nuclei of diff erent size decisively compromises the development conditions of the territory not only urban, but territorial and environmental. On what criteria regionalization should be sustained or modified, it is an important starting point for undertaking transformations in governance, planning and management so that the regions have a real role in national and local development. In the following proposal it is intended to establish a theoretical exercise with a spatially multivariate approach, which allows to join new criteria for the regionalization processes that are coming in a marked neoliberal context. In conclusion, the indicators that result from this exercise allow us to advance in a competitive, socially cohesive and environmentally sustainable region.