A Demographic Dynamics System for Municipalities in the Brazilian Amazon

Ricardo A. Garcia, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais
Britaldo Soares-Filho, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

Population growth and migration represent an important underlying cause of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. Models designed to simulate deforestation should therefore incorporate a demographic dynamics system to help project the rates of deforestation across the basin. We present a demographic model that projects population at municipality level by computing migratory movement among Amazonian municipalities, both in and out of the region, as well as their crude birth and mortality rates. The annual projections from 1995 to 2035 are based mainly on mortality, fertility, and migration data from the 1991 and 2000 IBGE censuses. The migratory movement was determined by establishing an origin-destination matrix for all the Amazonian municipalities and Brazilian states from 1995 to 2000. Validation was performed by comparing the model output with 2000 IBGE data. The model is designed to handle various scenarios of regional migration in face of existing projects to expand infrastructure across the Amazon.