Desertification in Brazil (Google / Helium)

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Desertification in Brazil

by Aldo Bonincontro

In Brazil, desertification is advancing in many States of the North-East, in the south-eastern State of Espirito Santo and in the north of Minas Gerais. This worrying situation affects 44 million Brazilians and about 20% of North-East population. This is what referred in August 2007 at the first Brazilian National Conference on Fighting Desertification that took place in Fortaleza, in the North-East.

The soil of these regions is losing its fertility and becoming drier and drier; the causes are mainly human, but surely enhanced by the effects of global warming in the whole Brazil, as well caused by man worldwide. These regions are all around the great Amazon forest that has been dramatically reduced in the last decades by logging and fires to obtain new land for farming and cattle pasture, by resettlements and by mining activities. In the recent past, also these regions owned wide forests and they are paying this loss now. In the North-West, also the typical dry tropical forest (named “caatinga”) has been reduced for farming purposes, to get firewood and charcoal for local ceramics and gypsum industries. This adds to the inadequate use of soil caused by intensive farming.

Desertification is eased by the features of the fertile soil formed by forests with their organic matter in decomposition; this layer, in fact, is rather thin, given the fast mineralization favoured by the extremely warm and humid equatorial climate. Just for this reason, the roots of the great trees in the forest are as well superficial to take the maximum advantage from this fertile layer. After the forest has been destroyed, this soil is easily depleted by intensive farming and cattle breeding (despite the massive use of artificial fertilizers) and rains and winds erode it within few years or decades. In this manner, Brazil shows 1.3 million Km² affected by progressive desertification so far, nearly 2.4 times the whole surface of France.

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