The farming transformation in the Dry Chaco of Argentina and the climatic jump

PAOLASSO, P.; FERRERO, M.E.; GASPARRI, N.I.; KRAPOVICKAS, J.

Biodiversity and climate change: Adaptation of land use systems

Sierke-Verlag

Lugar: Göttingen, Alemania; Año: 2010;

In the 1950´s, and with greater emphasis since 1970, has been detected in large part of Argentina and especially in the vast Chaco plain a "positive climatic jump". This has had a major impact on natural and man-made ecosystems, The changes associated with the new demands of international food markets, enabled the launching of new agricultural activities especially soybean crops, which advance is displacing other crops and primarily natural forests. The aim of this paper is to analyze changes in land use under the observed climatic change in Dry Chaco of Argentina during the last decades. Data from the official network of meteorological stations was used to assess long-term variations in precipitation at Dry Chaco, mainly at Argentinean provinces of Salta, Formosa, Chaco, Tucumán and Santiago del Estero. We also considered changes in land use with data from the National Agricultural Census. Results show that the climatic jump in Dry Chaco is associated with an important advance of agricultural activities, including oilseeds and grains, increasing by almost 442,000 hectares the area under cultivatios between 1988 ans 2002. In return, deforested area was about 910,000 hectares for the same period.