Corredor ecológico entre as áreas protegidas de Carajás e da Terra do Meio, Pará

Abstract

This research aims to analyze the viability of the implementation of an ecological corridor between the Carajás and Terra do Meio protected areas, in the state of Pará. The ecological corridor is a strategy of landscape integration that helps reducing the impacts on the borders of protected areas, and it contributes to the production of economical alternatives to local populations. The research area is an ecosystem in which small and medium-sized farmers have used for farming activities. The literature points out two strategies to increase the landscape permeability in agroecosystem: expanding the crop diversity and increasing the proportion of natural areas. The methodology for the study adopted a geographical information system in order to bounder the corridor area and to establish the area to be restored. It was performed a diagnostic of the agroecosystems that embody the ecological corridor, by focusing on its socio-ecological metabolism. The agroecosystems were grouped into categories, so it was applied an economical and ecological analysis on the production systems, by considering its relationship with the management of production factors: workforce, land/natural resources, and capital. The change in land use goes through the agroecological transitioning of the agroecosystems in the ecological corridor area, considering that the most adaptable alternatives are the intensification of cattle raising activities and agroecological systems with cocoa under shaded conditions, based on the farmer characteristics: peasants or agribusiness farmers. Forestry restoration is an option in those cases where workforce and financial resources are limited. It was concluded that the proposed ecological corridor is technical and environmentally feasible to be implanted and that by using agroecological practices is possible to integrate farming production objectives activities into biodiversity conservation goals, which in turn is responsible for the provision of the ecosystem services to agroecosystems. The research also contributes with data to design a more integrated territorial management among the different ecosystems.