A Destruição do cerrado e o reflorestamento como meio de valorização regional

Resumo

In this paper are focused the most important aspect that characterize the "cerrado", a typical vegetation coverage, which reaches, in its extension, more than one fifth of the national territory.

The A. analyses then, these aspects, trying to determine the factors which are causing the destruction of the natural resources, rich in this area and waiting for a good utilization. He lists among the principal factors the following:

a) Utilization of a primitive agricultural methods, where the fire is the principal tool in preparing the crop fields, causing the lost of the indispensable organic elements of the soil and making impossible, on this way, the natural regeneration of the plant species, with a total disfigurement of the original landscape;

b) Pasture activity made in an irrational pattern as a consequence of an inappropriate and disordered division of great extension of lands, that was formerly peopled during the mining cycle and later, after its decay, divided in large "fazendas" (cattle ranch), where the cattle raising is carried out in an inadequate and extensive way;

c) The utilization of the wood as firewood. Such procedure, due to the intensity which is practiced in certain density peopled areas, has caused the devastation of the original vegetation and without any kind of replantation is promoting the destruction of the soil, as it remain exposed to the natural erosion agents.

Finally the A. suggest that a serious study must be accomplished, having in view the phytoedaphologic elements of the "cerrado", its hydrology, and preconizing the reforestation as an adequate policy to the development of the region.