Rethinking the dynamics of woody vegetation in Uruguayan campos, 1800-2000

Journal of Historical Geography

Volumn 36, Issue 2, 2010, Pages 194-204

  Gautreau, Pierre ^a  

^a UNIVERSITÉ PARIS 1 PANTHÉON SORBONNE   (France)

Author keywords

Campos; Crisis narratives; Environmental history; Forest dynamics; Grasslands; Land survey charts; South America; Uruguay

Indexed keywords

ANTHROPOGENIC EFFECT; ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION; ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY; FOREST DYNAMICS; GRASSLAND; LANDSCAPE CHANGE; VEGETATION;

URUGUAY;

EID: 77954036071     PISSN: 03057488     EISSN: 10958614     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/j.jhg.2009.06.016     Document Type: Article

References (47)

1. We are mainly referring to historical interpretations developed by natural scientists, and not to studies conducted by historians.
2. J.M. MacKenzie, Empire and the ecological apocalypse: the historiography of the imperial environment, in: T. Griffiths, L. Robin (Eds), Ecology and Empire. Environmental History of Settlers Societies, Keele, 1997, 215-228.
3. K.W. Butzer, D.M. Helgren, Livestock, land cover and environmental history: the tablelands of New South Wales, Australia, 1820-1920, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 1 (2005) 80-111.
4. or an example of this kind of research and for a review of French works on this topic, see: P. Gautreau, Géographies d'une 'destruction' des forêts dans un territoire d'herbages. Récits de crise et résilience forestière dans les campos uruguayens du 18e au 20e siècle, PHD thesis, Lille: Université de Lille 1, 2006.
5. 5This 'Campos' landscape is dominated by grasslands, with scattered marginal woody patches: gallery forests, forest patches on slopes, or shrublands. For a review of current ecological knowledge on the Brazilian Campos, see: G.E. Overbeck, S.C. Müller, A. Fidelis, J. Pfadenhauer, V.D. Pillar, C.C. Blanco, I. Boldrini, R. Both, E.D. Forneck, Brazil's Neglected Biome: the South Brazilian Campos, Perspectives in Plant Ecology, Evolution and Systematics 9 (2007) 101-116.
6. Forest cover estimates in the country vary between 590,000 and 811,000 hectares (MGAP, 2000 agronomical census). This represents from 3 to 5% of the country's total area..
7. Here we use the term shrubland to describe continuous layers of woody vegetation, formed by shrubs, that cover more than 80% of the soil. Shrublands are dominated in the region by the Asteraceae family (genera Baccharis, Eupatorium and Heterotalamus) and Sapindaceae (Dodonaea viscosa (L.) Jacq.). Their height may vary from 50cm to 4m, more frequently reaching heights of 1-2m. In this study, any formation dominated by trees, with a height superior to 4m, is considered as 'wood'.
8. M. Brossard, D. López-Hernández, Des indicateurs d'évolution du milieu et des sols pour rendre durable l'usage des savanes d'Amérique du Sud, Sciences, Natures, Sociétés 13 (2005) 266-278; MGAP, Agronomical Census, Montevideo, 1908, 1966, 1980, 1990, 2000, 2002.
9. S. Archer, T.W. Boutton, K.A. Hibbard, Trees in Grasslands: biogeochemical Consequences of Woody Plant Expansion, in: E.D. Schulze (Ed), Biogeochemical Cycles in the Climate System, San Diego, 2001, 115-137.
10. G.M. Roseveare, The grasslands of Latin America, Bulletin, Cardiff: Imperial Bureau of Pastures and Field Crops, 36 (1945) 3-291. For example, the work of A.H. Clark made no mention of the Campos (The Impact of Exotic Invasions on the Remaining New World Mid-Latitude Grasslands, in: W.L. Thomas (Ed), Man's Role in Changing the Face of the Earth, Chicago, 1956, 737-762). For an historical analysis of the processes that led to ecological awareness of the grasslands' ecological importance, see: P. Gautreau, and C. Hinnewinkel, L'émergence d'un statut écologique pour les herbages: une vision croisée Inde (Nilgiri) - Río de la Plata, in: Paysage et environnement: de la reconstitution du passé aux modèles prospectifs, Colloque de Chilhac, 27-30.09.2006, 2006 (in press). Lately, there has been an increase in ecological publications (for an example, see: F. Lezama, A. Altesor, J.L. León, J.M. Paruelo, Heterogeneidad de la vegetación en pastizales naturales de la región basáltica de Uruguay, Ecología Austral 16 (2006) 167-182), that mark a clear break from the previous botanical and agronomical studies of grasslands by Rosengurtt (for an example from an abundant scientific production, see: B. Rosengurtt, B. Arillaga de Maffei, P. Izaguirre, Gramíneas uruguayas, Montevideo, 1970).
11. D. Bilenca, F. Miñarro, Áreas Valiosas de Pastizal en las Pampas y Campos de Argentina, Uruguay y Sur de Brasil (AVPs), Buenos-Aires, 2004; A. Soriano, The Río de la Plata grasslands, in: R.T. Coupland (Ed), Natural Grasslands. Introduction and Western Hemisphere, 1992, 367-407.
12. For Rio Grande do Sul, see: H. Behling, L. De Patta Pillar, S. Girardi Bauermann, Late Quaternary Grassland (Campos), Gallery Forest, Fire and Climate Dynamics, Studied by Pollen, Charcoal and Multivariate Analysis of the São Francisco de Assis Core in Western Rio Grande do Sul (Southern Brazil), Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology 133 (2005) 235-248. For the Buenos-Aires Pampa, see: J. Deschamps, O. Otero, E. Tonni, Cambio climático en la Pampa bonaerense: las precipitaciones desde los siglos 18 al 20, Documentos de trabajo de la Universidad de Belgrano 109 (2003); L. Parodi, Distribución geográfica de los talares de la Provincia de Buenos-Aires, Darwiniana 4 (1940) 33-56.
13. B. Rosengurtt, Sucesión. Concepto de la tendencia climácica (for internal University use), Montevideo: Facultad de Agronomía, Cátedra de forrajeras, bolilla 5, 12p. Rosengurtt pioneered the agronomical study of Uruguay's grasslands. He published abundantly from the 1940s to 1970s, and trained the major part of Uruguayan agronomists as Professor at the Facultad de Agronomía of Montevideo.
14. O. Del Puerto, La extensión de la comunidades arbóreas primitivas en el Uruguay, Notas técnicas 1 (1987).
15. G. Evia, E. Gudynas, Ecología del Paisaje en Uruguay. Aportes para la conservación de la Diversidad Biológica, Montevideo, Sevilla, 2000.
16. O. Schmieder, Alteration of the Argentine Pampa in the Colonial Period, Berkeley, Publications in Geography 2 (1927) 303-321; H. Ellenberg, Wald in der Pampa Argentiniens, Zürich: Veröffentlichungen des Geobotanischen Instituts der ETH, Stiftung Rübel 37 (1962) 39-56; J. Demangeot, Les milieux 'naturels' du globe, Paris, 1998.
17. ee note 10: Gautreau, Hinnewinkel.
18. This process led to an original 'hybrid' cadastre: it mixed the drawing up of a list of the country's public lands by the Commission (without map production), and the collation of charts of public terrains that private individuals wished to lease from the State. Those maps were produced by authorized land surveyors, and then supervised and archived by the Commission (but not produced by it). The United Provinces (former Argentina), created a similar Topographic Commission in 1824. Most of the main land surveyors who integrated the former Uruguayan Topographic Commission were recognized experts in cartography and geodesy from other parts of the Río de la Plata countries - mainly Buenos-Aires - or from European countries like Spain, England, Italy, France, Sweden, Hungary (personal inquiry in progress, from the official list of Public Land surveyors: Ministerio de Transporte y Obras Públicas, Dirección de Topografía, Archivo Gráfico, N°de inventario DNT-AG-3+).
19. The decree of December 19, 1831 specifies the Commission's responsibilities: to create archives centralizing all cartographic documents; to determine the 'geographical positions' of the country's places; to prepare the development of a national map by collating earlier works; to define the mapping mode; to control the land surveyors. Article 2 specifies that all land surveyors who want to be registered officially have to pass an examination in 'geodesy, topography and descriptive drawing'. The decree of August 3, 1833 defines the role of the land-surveyor by giving him a role equivalent to that of a judge, in charge of settling possible disagreements between the applicant (who orders the measurement of land) and his neighbours. He is regarded as responsible for any errors in this work. Article 19 sets the fees payable to him for all the acts he carries out: commuting to the work place, devising and drawing the chart, fixing the tariff according to the land's size.
20. Landsat TM coloured composition of 2000 and 2001, resampled at a 15m resolution.
21. See note 2.
22. D. Larrañaga, Diario de un viaje de Montevideo al pueblo de Paysandú, Revista Histórica (1910 edition) 7-8; Auguste de Saint-Hilaire, Voyage à Rio Grande do Sul (Brésil), Orléans, 1887; A. Isabelle, Voyage à Buenos-Ayres et à Porto Alegre, par la Bande Orientale, les Missions d'Uruguay et la Province de Rio Grande do Sul (de 1830 à 1834), Paris, 1835; P.G. Lorentz, La vegetación del Nordeste de la Provincia de Entre-Ríos, Buenos-Aires, 1878 (the Argentinean Entre-Ríos coast he visited is similar to the Uruguayan shore).
23. J.M. Reyes, Descripción geográfica del territorio de la República Oriental del Uruguay acompañada de observaciones geológicas y cuadros estadísticos, Montevideo, 1860.
24. Three places indicate area growth. On the northernmost chart (Ministerio de Transporte y Obras Públicas Archive, Montevideo, chart N° 102817), the few small forest islands that existed in 1832 were replaced by a massive forest in 1966. Overall, however, slope forests were strikingly stable.
25. 23.06.1815, see note 22.
26. Mentions that he crossed grasslands 'without a single shrub' (02.12.1820) are more frequent. Over the course of four months of travel, he only mentioned three places in which shrubs grew outside of small valleys, in Santa Teresa, Maldonado and Guardia del Cuareim.
27. 04.10.1833, see note 22. 2828The only exception was a single mention of an area where Baccharis notosergila Grisebach abounded.
28. Only once, in the surroundings of Rosario (South-West of the country), did he evoke with precision the Dodonaea viscosa (L.) Jacq. shrub, 'which is abundant in Campos, adjacent [to forests]'.
29. M.J. Scanlan, Biogeography of Forest Plants in the Prairie-Forest Ecotone in Western Minnesota, Ecological Studies 41 (1981) 67-95.
30. See note 4, Overbeck et al.
31. See note .11.
32. P. Deffontaines, Contribution à la géographie pastorale de l'Amérique latine, Rio de Janeiro, 1964. Repeated decrees by the citizen assembly of the 'Cabildo de Buenos-Aires' in the second half of the 17th century, or by that of Montevideo between 1748 and 1775, insist on prohibiting 'the burning of fields', which proves that this practice was frequent.
33. G.G. Politis, Climatic Variations During Historical Times in Eastern Buenos-Aires Pampas, Argentina, Quaternary of South America and Antartic Peninsula 2 (1984) 133-161; C.L. Leonhardt, Documentos inéditos relativos a los antiguos jesuitas en la actual R.O del Uruguay sacados de los archivos de Buenos-Aires por el P. Carlos L., S.J. Colegio del Salvador de Buenos-Aires, in: Revista del Instituto histórico y Geográfico del Uruguay 2 (1927) 505-556; reference to the burning of marshes in a land-surveying chart (MTOP, chart N° 82277).
34. Mentions by Saint-Hilaire: 09.10.1820; Isabelle: 20.10.1833.
35. Código Rural reformado de la República Oriental del Uruguay, Montevideo, 1879.
36. T. Berro, Quemazones de campo, Revista de la Asociación Rural del Uruguay (1900) 714.
37. J.P. Barrán, B. Nahum, Historia Rural del Uruguay Moderno. 1886-1894, Montevideo: Ediciones del a Banda Oriental, 1971; J.P. Barrán, B. Nahum, Historia Rural del Uruguay Moderno. 1851-1885, Montevideo: Ediciones del a Banda Oriental, 1967, 329-330; MGAP (note 7).
38. J.M. Briggs, An Ecosystem in Transition: causes and Consequences of the Conversion of Mesic Grassland to Shrublands, BioScience 55 (2005) 243-254.
39. The Rural Code (see note: 39) compelled farmers to close their property.
40. National trend in average size of paddocks for the years 1908, 1966 and 2000 (in ha): 248, 66, 54 (source: see note: 7).
41. See note: 3.
42. Rainfall average for the 1931-1961 and 1971-2001 periods (in mm), and variations between these two series, for six meteorological stations: Mercedes (953, 1197, 25.6%); Paysandú (1154, 1254, 8.7%); Prado-Montevideo (1063, 1157, 8.8%); Rivera (1479, 1620, 9.6%); Rocha (997, 1224, 22.8%); Treinta-y-Tres (1112, 1410, 26.8%). Data source: Dirección Nacional de Meteorología, Montevideo; see also: Deschamps et al. (note: 11).
43. M. Rolfo, Estudio del género Prosopis en el Uruguay, Montevideo, 1970.
44. C.A.M. Lindman, A vegetacão do Rio Grande do Sul (Brasil Austral), Porto Alegre, 1906; B. Rambo, A fisionomia do Río Grande do Sul. Ensaio de monografia natural, Porto Alegre, 1956.
45. See note: 11, Behling et al., 2005.
46. Extension of forest patches borders generally occurs when the fire-setting frequency is superior to two years. For Rio Grande do Sul, see (note: 4) (Müller); for Uruguay, see (note 3).
47. The few areas of forest loss (see