Spatial and temporal trends in freshwater fish research: the case of three neotropical river basins from Goiás State, Central Brazil

Abstract

Aim In this paper, we conducted a scientometric analysis on published studies related to freshwater fish species at Goiás State to evaluate: i) their spatial and temporal trends; ii) areas of knowledge; iii) scientific journals where these papers were published and their comprehensiveness; iv) the role of institutions and financial support on fish research. Methods Using Google Scholar and Lattes platform, we searched for scientific papers related to freshwater fish, and we extracted the following information of each paper: title, author and co-authors’ name, number of authors, year, authors and co-authors’ affiliation, journal, field/area of the research, and financial support. Results We found 322 scientific papers related to Goiás State with a slightly growth in the number of publications over time. Most of these papers are related to Ecology, Systematic/Taxonomy and Fish Biology, and the participation of local institutions in these studies was mainly concentrated in Paraná River basin. Although most of funding were granted by agencies or institutions located outside Goiás State, the results showed that fish papers achieved a broad audience with publications in national and international journals with impact factor. Conclusions Our study revealed that: 1) freshwater fish research at Goiás State has a slow increase trend; 2) there are gaps in Education, Conservation and Fisheries knowledge areas; 3) local institutions’ contribution is spatially concentrated; 4) studies achieved a broad audience with many scientific papers published in journals with impact factor; 5) financial support was granted in most part by agencies or institutions located outside Goiás State. These findings suggest that despite achievements in freshwater fish research in this region, local investments in infrastructure, materials and human resources are still necessary to improve the production of studies.

Large-scale Degradation of the Tocantins-Araguaia River Basin

“…For example, maintenance of the connectivity and natural flow regimes of remaining free-flowing rivers (especially in the Araguaia Basin), more-stringent control of irrigation projects, climatic monitoring, preservation of riparian forests, control of deforestation in both the savanna and rainforests (especially in the headwaters), revoking the authorization of aquaculture with non-native species, and improving the inspection and control of these activities. Still necessary to achieve these goals are integrative and multidisciplinary studies to explicitly evaluate the impacts of environmental and anthropic drivers on distinct components of biodiversity and at different spatial scales, especially because basic and important knowledge gaps persist (Carvalho and Tejerina-Garro 2019;Machado et al 2019;Colli et al 2020). The economic importance of this basin is beyond question (i.e., production of hydroelectricity and commodities), but it does not justify the ongoing environmental degradation.…”