ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the magnitude of forest clearing and emphasizes that ranching is the predominant use of converted areas. It discusses the general features of tropical forests, as well as the broad soil changes that take place after conversion. The chapter describes the agronomy of ranching and also explores the specific effects of conversion of tropical rain forest to pasture. It addresses some of the social implications of the land use. The transformation of vast areas of forest to grasslands has resulted in a great deal of controversy in both the biological and the social sciences. In the eastern Amazon, the effects of forest conversion to Panicum have been examined by I. Falesi, Philip Fearnside, and A. Serrao etal. , and S. B. Hecht. In Amazonia, the development decades of the 1960s and 1970s were characterized primarily by the expansion of cattle ranching. The pressure for land acquisition in the Amazon comes from several quarters.
