*4.5. Journals*

Regarding the journals of publication, it is remarkable that most Brazilian journals are included in the CAPES website; thus, they are available for a free consultation, which makes a strong publications body. In contrast, most international journals are not contained in the open CAPES site; this is usually compensated with the university's libraries. The usual dilemma of publication language for non-English speakers is an important decision for researchers, as English-written articles target a worldwide audience and help to increase the possibility of the journals being more widely known. In contrast, Portuguese written articles may be more available to a lusophone audience, especially undergraduate students and policymakers.

### *4.6. The Beginnings of Historical Ecology*

The first publications of Historical Ecology in Brazil that we found in the present systematic mapping are about archaeology in the Amazon [70,169,180]. Interestingly, Neves's 1998 [70] article is an overview of twenty years of archaeological research in the Amazon, where he brings about the Historical Ecology concept from Balée works [54,181] as a kind of paradigm change. However, the fundamental understanding of the relationship between humans and the environment throughout history might have been addressed before the term 'Historical Ecology' or 'Environmental History' appeared. We coincide with Sedrez and Nodari [48], who argue that some authors delivered early efforts in this direction. For instance, the work "*Nordeste*" [182] by the anthropologist and sociologist Gilberto Freyre, which narrates the history of sugarcane in the Brazilian Northeast; or "*Caminhos e fronteiras*" [183] by the historian and sociologist Sergio Buarque de Holanda, which is about the territorial occupation of Brazil, discussing the tensions between nature, indigenous peoples and the colonizers.

### *4.7. Temporal Scales*

Concerning the temporal scale in the articles, it is interesting to observe the capacity of Historical Ecology to address and answer questions in a lengthy scope of time. It also demonstrates the necessary collaboration with fields such as archaeology or geology. Some methodologies like palynology, anthracology, or C14 dating can bring data from thousands of years ago, whereas some other methods like hemerographic consultation or analysis of photographs show information on the contemporary period. We noticed the constant references to the European colonization of Brazil as a critical driver of landscape transformation in the 16th century. This made us fine-tune our categories from the 16th century onwards but not before that. Even though there are fewer articles from the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, there are many topics that can be further investigated that occurred within this time, such as the effects in the landscape from sugar cane plantations or mining exploitation, the earliest introductions of foreign plants and animals during colonization, whale hunting, the early influence of the African diaspora in the landscape, and so on. There is research about these topics, but we did not find articles published under the perspective

of Historical Ecology. This seems a good opportunity to team up with researchers from other fields.
