The municipality of São Félix do Xingu, located in the southeastern mesoregion of the state of
Pará, is the second largest municipality in Pará and the sixth largest in Brazil in terms of
territorial extension, with 84,212.903 km2. It has the largest municipal cattle herd, reaching 2.5
million head in 2022. In that same year, the municipality totaled 24.31% of its area deforested,
due to the constant process of converting forests into pasture areas. In this sense, this
dissertation work deals with the advance of the livestock frontier in São Félix do Xingu and its
effects on changes in land use and cover, and its environmental and socioeconomic impacts.
The general objective of this research was to investigate the role of the advance of the livestock
frontier in the dynamics of deforestation in São Félix do Xingu, for the period from 1985 to
2022. The methodology was guided by the typologies of qualitative, quantitative and
exploratory research. Annual land use and land cover maps and data from MapBiomas in
GeoTiff format for the period between 1985 and 2022, deforestation data from the Satellite
Monitoring Project for Deforestation in the Legal Amazon (PRODES) and data from the
Municipal Livestock Farming Program (PPM/IBGE) were used. The results showed continued
growth in deforestation during the period studied, confirming that the livestock frontier
continues to advance over the natural resources of this municipality beyond the non-designated
public forests, also advancing over areas protected by law, which demonstrated that the frontier
remains open and controlled by the institutions present in this municipality.
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