Ilha de Assunção, on the River São Francisco, is in the municipality of Cabrobó. Today it is a typical illustration of desertification in Pernambuco. The island’s once-rich soils made it one of the most fertile areas in the region. Yet today over one third of its 5,000 hectares of rich arable land have become totally useless for cultivation. Whereas in most other places where erosion has been the main culprit for impoverishing the soil, in Assunção the villain is different: salinisation. The effects, however, are equally devastating. The sterile land can only support acacia, an invasive tree that spreads in land where the native vegetation of the Caatinga, such as the coral and California pepper trees, can no longer flourish.

What is even more worrying is that the disappearance of the fertile layers of soil has been a direct consequence of man’s disastrous action in the region. Poorly conceived and conducted irrigation policies introduced an excessive amount of water to the land, drastically affecting the chemical composition of the soil. Without adequate drainage the water simply evaporated in the high temperatures of the Sertão, leaving only concentrated salts in the earth. The salt levels were so high that hardly any plant-life at all was able to survive.

The trail of destruction left by the advance of desertifcation has spread to the municipality of Petrolândia, where vast quantities of land were excavated to construct roads and the Itaparica dam. Biologist and agricultural ecologist Maurício Aroucha, who has been studying the occurrence of the phenomenon in this region for years explains: " The problem is that none of the trees have been replanted. Without reforestation, the land has become even more vulnerable to the process of erosion and craters are now expanding and moving towards the land that is currently used for raising livestock"

Inadequate irrigation techniques have caused huge damage in Petrolândia, following the pattern of Cabrobó. One case is the community of Barreiras, where an area of 18,000 hectares was cut down in order to transform it into a huge irrigation project, which has never even been started.

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