Abstract
This article discusses the early decades of landscape transformation in the northwest of Rio Grande do Sul, in the twentieth century, after the entry of European immigrants and their descendants. Basically, the transformation of the landscape in the study area had two different times, with different characteristics, mainly in the intensity of intervention actions in space. The first, in the early decades, in which the immigrants used basically fire and hand tools (saws, axes, hoes, etc.) for the cutting of the forest and agricultural production, and a second after the second half of the century, with intensification of intervention by the modernization of agriculture. This, as only deepened the environmental imbalances that had already occurred to a lesser extent in the earlier time, but worrying, especially in the degradation of soil and water and attack "pests" to agricultural production, discussed in this article.
Key words:
Colonization; Landscape; Environmental Degradation