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Integrated Analysis of Landscape; Geosystem Theory; Compartmentalization and Geoenvironmental Zoning; Northern Coast Potiguar.
Geography is characterized by being a science endowed with an ample capacity of apprehension of knowledge of the world. Being at a crossroads between the basic and applied sciences, on the one hand, and natural and social, on the other, it seeks to work at its core with the complex, dynamic and eminent relationship between man and nature. Since the classical thinkers, for example, Alexander Von Humboldt and Élisée Reclus, this (systemic/ integrated) thinking permeates the basic studies that ended up being responsible for the epistemological enrichment of geographic science. However, the extreme specialization of Geography, based mainly on the dichotomy between Physical and Human Geography, weakened its theoretical field in the XIX and XX centuries, which came to be overcome, even from the same century, by the return of systemic thinking, through new formulations such as the General Theory of Systems proposed by Ludwig von Bertalanffy. This theory was the background for the geosystemic conception, founded by Viktor Sochava and Georges Bertrand, who allied himself with the concept of landscape for the formulation of a Global Physical Geography, which is intrinsically linked to the objects of study of this work, which is still in progress. It was taken, here, as a fundamental parameter, the reflections of the aforementioned French biogeographer and teacher Marcos Nogueira de Souza on the characteristics of this compartmentalization. Starting from this perspective, this study aims to elaborate the geoenvironmental compartmentalization of the northern coast of the state of Rio Grande do Norte, aiming at the generation of subsidies for a later environmental/territorial planning. Using a methodology oriented by the physical aspects of the studied area (mainly the geomorphological), it was tried to work with the scale of 1:50.000, in which the scale of the geofacies was prioritized. Therefore, geoprocessing and remote sensing techniques were used, by means of the cartographic data vectorization and high resolution images, together with fieldwork. As preliminary results, emphasize the observation of 8 (eight) geocomplexes and at least 15 (fifteen) geofacies, which are partially described, as well as a detailed characterization of the physical aspects of the every delimited area.