Environmental impacts in Castro zone of the Paraná talc district, Brazil

Resumo

During the last two centuries, in Castro zone of the Paraná talc district in southern Brazil, native subtropical rain forest was exploited for wood and firewood use. During the last decade the exploitation process of the native forest has continued. In this paper it is presented a multi-temporal research about the impact of the native forest use. The chiefly aim is to discuss and illustrate the consequences of the use of forest and the absence of the reforest action in degraded areas in Castro zone of the Paraná talc district and the relation between the environmental impacts and the economic activities in the region. The landscape impact of the mining activities is evident, although very limited in area if it is considered the territory in its totality. The main impact in the region is the deforestation. Through Landsat images it was possible to determine the changes that occurred in the land use in the region from 1990 to 2000. It is described the behavior of 4 classification entities: riparian forest, forest, cropland and bare soil. In these 10 years the main environmental impact is associated to forest reducing from 52% to 38 % of the total area. The deforestation was associated to wood industries in the past, nowadays it is linked to use of the soil to crop farms, firewood mainly to mining activities, especially lime-kiln and just few amount to dry talc ore product. In the last 3 years the firewood to dry talc was replaced by lumber-mill dust that represents wastes in wood industries.