Socio-economic dimensions and population movements: a regionalisation of the Brazilian Amazonian

Ricardo A. Garcia, Instituto de Geociências da Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (IGC/UFMG)
Britaldo Soares-Filho, Centro de Sensoriamento Remoto (CSR/IGC/UFMG)
Diana Sawyer, Cedeplar-Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

This paper characterizes the socioeconomic space in the Brazilian Amazon, focusing on the levels of socioeconomic organization and the interrelationships among regions determined through migratory movements. We developed a model of territory organization based on the coordination of five components: the hierarchy of central places (poles) established by the concentration of urban specialized services; the geographical distance between central poles and other centers; the pole’s populations; the migratory movements among them, and a socioeconomic dimension index. These components are combined into a gravitational model to produce measures and maps of the socioeconomic municipality network of the Brazilian Amazon. The identified Amazon region network comprises a nested spatial pattern of municipalities not constrained by the state boundaries, pointing out the influence of the socioeconomic space and population movements on the mobility of the deforestation frontier. This picture provides insights to foresee deforestation as well as to direct sustainable development policies suitable for each region’s specificity.