Percepção da paisagem como ferramenta de sensibilização em auxílio à educação ambiental

Abstract

This study analyzes the perception presented by a population sample regarding modified and natural landscape, aiming to test the landscape perception as a tool to help in formal and informal environmental education. The stimulus to make people notice their surroundings, with the modifications imposed by urban growth, allows working with individual and collective sensitization, searching for a change in the anti-ecological attitudes and unsustainable habits. Here this tool is tested so that it can be used as a suggestion of Environmental Education practice at school and informally as well, in order to provide a growth in the co responsibility feelings of the population towards the environment. The investigation was conducted applying a questionnaire to 120 (one hundred twenty) people at a shopping in the city of Santa Maria. As the place is visited by every social class of the city mentioned it provides a diversified population for the survey concerning education, age and financial status. The questionnaire consisted of questions aiming to make the interviewees to explain their preferences about the environment quality and their understanding about the nowadays situation in Santa Maria in relation to urban forestry and cleaning. At the end, using pictures of different landscapes, each participant pointed out his preferences in relation to natural environments, modified or degraded, allowing the interpretation conducted by this study, which tried to highlight the perception of the population about the relation between landscape and life quality. In the end, it was concluded that the interviewees understood the proposal and could relate the environmental quality to the natural or little modified space, highlighting a great number of environmental problems that influence the life quality of their relatives, such as the wrong disposal of solid waste in urban areas and promenades, and the bad up keeping of parks and leisure areas.