Analysis of land use in the municipality of Gandu, Southern Bahia Lowlands: Interaction of cocoa crop with the Atlantic Forest biome

Abstract

The present research aims to analyze the land use in the municipality of Gandu, in the Southern Bahian Lowlands, and the interaction of the cocoa crop with the Atlantic Forest biome. As a methodology, theoretical and empirical surveys were carried out on phytophysiognomic diversity, land use and some species of the Atlantic Forest biome, as well as their agroecological relationship with cocoa crop. Interviews were made and questionnaires were applied on the relationship between cocoa production and the forest, field visits to cocoa farms, photographs of the forest (camera), cocoa cultivation in the municipality and also the identification of species with greater incidence in the landscape, use of the GIS (Geographic Information System) system as a geographic database for the analysis of geospatial data and generation of a map of location and land use. The results obtained reveal that most of the interviewees say that there has been degradation in the vegetation cover of the biome in recent decades, the vast majority say that the preservation of the forest is associated with the cultivation of cocoa, and that without it, the devastation of the forest was greater for the implementation of other crops such as cattle raising, bananas and subsistence crops at the time of the witches' broom. The fieldwork, together with the satellite images, shows that the forest is quite altered and this is associated with the use of the land: called capoeirinha, capoeira and capoeirão and more or less preserved fragments of the native ombrophilous forest in mountainous areas. It is concluded that the crop relationship is the most recurrent and oldest land use practice in the municipality of Gandu-Ba and that even with the changes in the dense ombrophilous forest, the cocoa crop contributes to the conservation of the Atlantic Forest biome through its Agroforestry System (AFS) that conserves part of the forest for exotic shading.