Formação para o ensino agrícola nos Centros de Treinamento de Professores e de Auxiliares Rurais (1952-1963)

This paper analyzes agricultural education as proposed and developed by the National Campaign for Rural Education (1952-1963) in Training Centers for Rural Teachers and Assistants. It analyzes the curricula of such courses published by the campaign in special issue, number 10 in 1961/1962. Agricultural education was a part of rural education and aimed to train rural teachers and expand the knowledge of rural men to make them remain in their environment. This training aimed to address the shortage of rural teachers, of agricultural knowledge, rural hygiene, strongly guided by the education of manners, of how to behave at the table and by the appreciation of rational leisure, together with campaigns for civil and marriage registration, a campaign for trees, encouragement to elect representatives to boards as a means of educating for citizenship. Such lack of rural teachers and the complaints about low wages disclose the practices of our current rulers who devalue the teaching profession.

Tree species community spatial structure in a terra firme Amazon forest, Brazil

All trees with diameter at breast height dbh >= 10.0 cm were stem-mapped in a "terra firme" tropical rainforest in the Brazilian Amazon, at the EMBRAPA Experimental Site, Manaus, Brazil. Specifically, the relationships of tree species with soil properties were determined by using canonical correspondence analyses based on nine soil variables and 68 tree species. From the canonical correspondence analyses, the species were grouped into two groups: one where species occur mainly in sandy sites, presenting low organic matter content; and another one where species occur mainly in dry and clayey sites. Hence, we used Ripley's K function to analyze the distribution of species in 32 plots ranging from 2,500 m(2) to 20,000 m(2) to determine whether each group presents some spatial aggregation as a soil variations result. Significant spatial aggregation for the two groups was found only at over 10,000 m(2) sampling units, particularly for those species found in clayey soils and drier environments, where the sampling units investigated seemed to meet the species requirements. Soil variables, mediated by topographic positions had influenced species spatial aggregation, mainly in an intermediate to large distances varied range (>= 20 m). Based on our findings, we conclude that environmental heterogeneity and 10,000 m(2) minimum sample unit sizes should be considered in forest dynamic studies in order to understand the spatial processes structuring the "terra firme" tropical rainforest in Brazilian Amazon.