Historical conditionings in the deterioration process of the River Biguaçu hydrographic basin

Resumen

The Biguaçu basin was settled by German and Azores immigrants and by groups of African slaves. German immigrants occupied the upper Biguaçu region, while the Azores people settled in the lowlands and later near the mouth of the river. The resource exploitation model and the settling sites of these populations were later shown to have impaired the environment and the economy. Lumber industry replaced the primitive forest by a secondary vegetation cover consisting of fewer species on the slopes of hills and mountains. The lowlands with their seasonal floods were deforested. This required rectification projects of the principal rivers forming the Biguaçu basin, carried out between 1966 and 1977. However, such rectifications were not able to provide a complete control of floods and rather caused chain reactions in the natural environment