Sustainability of traditional cultivation systems (slash-and-burn) depends especially on long periods of set-aside in order to reestablish the stock of the soil's nutrients and raw organic material used and/or lost during the agricultural period. Population growth and decrease in the region's secondary vegetation availability has progressively reduced the set-aside period, subsequently increasing the pressure on riparian areas and cultivated ones. The result if degradation of natural resources and reduction of sustainable soil use in the region.



In order to minimize these problems, systems alternate to slash-and-burn have been tested in Para's northeast, which consist of the development of family production systems by means of (a) secondary vegetation's cut (capoeira) and shredding and planting of quick growth arboreal vegetables in order to reduce the set-aside period, (b) introduction of agro-forest multi-stratified systems. The effect of these technologies on the productivity of some agricultural and stockbreeding systems of conservation of natural resources is relatively well known in the family unit system, but there still is the need to intensify integrated studies of diagnosis and impact of agricultural and stockbreeding systems on the soil, water and aquatic fauna in the scale of hydrographic micro-basins. It is also necessary to assess the status of permanent preservation areas, including phytosociological surveys and determination of methods of spreading potential species for restoration of these areas.



This project aims to evaluate the conservation potential of natural resources by systems of alternate agricultural and stockbreeding production and recomposition of secondary vegetation which aim to endorse sustainable models of participatory management of hydrographic basins in the northeast of Pará.



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