The factors of deforestation in the Araucaria forest: agriculture and cattle raising, fuel wood and timber industry

Abstract

Despite the significant changes occurred in the climate of Southern Brazil since the end of the last ice age, the historical process of deforestation of the Araucaria forest happened at an unprecedented rate throughout the twentieth century. Unlike natural causes, prevalent in previous periods, in the last century, a series of economic, political, social and cultural changes contributed to deforestation. In this article the aim is to do an integrated analysis that takes into account the main causes, or “factors” of clearing in the Araucaria forest ecosystem. To achieve this goal, we propose three main factors responsible for massive deforestation in the twentieth century: Farming and cattle raising, fuel wood and timber industry. This kind of analysis has the advantage of avoiding limited approaches that focus only on isolated aspects of deforestation, like the timber industry.