THE INFLUENCE OF SOIL USE AND OCCUPATION IN SOCIO-ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN THE MUNICIPALITIES OF THE SOUTHERN EXTREME.
Soil use and occupation, socioeconomic data, temporal evolution
The disordered urban growth is the main cause of problems of land use. In this way the temporal monitoring and evaluation of the use and occupation of the soil are importants to a planning and restructuring of the territory. Through knowledge of land use, it is possible to acquire information concerning the levels of conservation and anthropization of a especific area. Based on this problem, this study aimed to analyze how the influence of land use and occupation impacts on the socioeconomic development of the municipalities of the extreme south of Bahia, which has undergone several social and economic transformations since the discovery of Brazil, with the exploitation of natural resources and land occupation. The region covers a total of 21 municipalities, however the analysis only considered 13 of them. We used data of use and occupation of the years 1990, 1994, 2002, 2006 and 2013, provided by the Forest Forum in the extreme south of Bahia, and socio-economic data of the year 1991, 2000 and 2010, obtained from the Human Development Altitudes of Brazil, being correlated, by Pearson correlation (r), through the matching of soil use and occupation data with the socioeconomic data of 1990/1991, 2002/2000 and 2013/2010, respectively , in order to quantify the changes that occurred in the region. The territory of Alcobaça revealed eucalyptus as the class with the greatest territorial occupation between 1990 and 2013. Caravelas, Mucuri and Nova Viçosa presented predominantly grazing land, but the highest growth class is eucalyptus. The cities Itamaraju, Jucuruçu and Prado presented the highest index of degradation, since the forest areas were replaced by pasture. The dynamics of the soil, in general, has demonstrated the gradual increase of monoculture in the region to the detriment, above all, of pastures, forests in different stages and, to a lesser extent, agriculture. In the analysis of the correlation of the influence of the change in land use and occupation and socioeconomic development, it is noticed that the increase of the HDI accompanied the increase of the areas of the eucalyptus monoculture, as well as the increase of pasture quality, for the clean pasture. The reduction of inequality, GINI index, also had a very similar behavior. In general, it is observed that the increase in socioeconomic development accompanied a strong environmental degradation, which suggests that the economic development model adopted in the municipality is based on the loss of environmental quality. Given this, there is a need for the exchange of development model, because this model has strong pressure on the environment and its loss of quality.