International audienceBrazil is a continent-sized county, with a great diversity of ecosystems, unequally transformed by the processes of occupation and territorial formation. In the southern half of the country, the natural environment has been replaced by a humanized natural environment due to the pushing back of settlement frontiers, which, for five centuries, has transformed Brazil's land use. In recent decades the rhythm of change has been faster: on one hand, the population has increased, and migrated to the cities; on the other hand, the cultivation of major crops (coffee, sugar, soybean, cotton, etc.) has moved northwards and westwards, reaching northern regions such as Mato Grosso and Pará, threatening the rainforest in the Amazon Basin
