Socioeconomic indicators and land use change: study of forestation activity

Abstract

Changes in land use can impact socioeconomic and environmental indicators in time and space. This paper analyzes the changes in socioeconomic indicators of the municipalities of Rio Grande do Sul State (Brazil), by relating them with differences in land use, resulting from afforestation. This exploratory and descriptive research used secondary data. As result we have clustered municipalities by the proportion of afforestation area in relation to the total area of each municipality and compared them with socioeconomic indicators. Therefore, it had been concluded that to some extent forestation results in better indicators, but as the municipalities’ proportion of afforestation increases, the indicators worsen again.