O ciclo madeireiro e a devastação da Mata Atlântica da Bacia do Rio Doce na primeira metade do século XX

Abstract

The Atlantic Forest deforestation can be considered the first big environmental disaster that happened in Brazil, beginning with the first portugueses colonizers, but until today some aspects of this process were poorly explained or cartographed. A great explanation fault is temporally restricted to the first half of the 20th century and spatially limited in the Doce, Mucuri and São Matheus rivers basins. These regions count only with punctual and incomplete informations about the tropical forest exploration/deforestation. The present work analyze the Atlantic Forest in the Rio Doce Basin, during the first half of the 20th century, when the forest was economically explored, triggering an economic cycle that allows demographic growth in several locations.