Degradation Factors in a Risk-Prone Area: the Semiarid Northeast of Brazil

Abstract

The Portuguese settlement of northeast Brazil of the seventeenth century was initially restricted to the favorable locations along the coastal area (“zona da mata”) and to the neighboring sub-humid hilly region (“zona do agreste”). Later, the settlement extended to the limited spots of favorable conditions located within the area of the semiarid savanna, the “Sertão” (“brejos” and the humid “serras”). Droughts of varying duration and intensity have severely and repeatedly affected the interior of northeast Brazil, the “drought polygon”, ever since the first settlement by the Portuguese. The consequences of droughts are damage to agricultural production and shortage in the supply of water to humans and animals. Cropping systems are affected by delay of rainfall, dry speils in the initial phase of the cropping cycle, or even a total lack of rainfall for one or several years. During the most destructive drought of the nineteenth century in Ceará, half a million people (at that time half of the population of Ceará) and almost all animals died.