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The South of Pará, located in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon, has become notorious for violent land struggle. Although land conflict has a long history in Brazil, and today impacts many parts of the country, violence is most severe and persistent here. The purpose of this article is to examine why. Specifically, we consider how a particular Amazonian place, the so-called South of Pará, has come to be known as Brazil's most dangerous badland. We begin by considering the predominant literature, which attributes land conflict to the frontier expansion process with intensified struggle emerging in the face of rising property values and demand for private property associated with capitalist development. From this discussion, we distill a concept of the frontier, based on notions of property rights evolution and locational rents. We then empirically test the persistence of place-based violence in the region, and assess the frontier movement through an analysis of transportation costs. Findings from the analyses indicate that the prevalent theorization of frontier violence in Amazônia does little to explain its persistent and pervasive nature in the South of Pará. To fill this gap in understanding, we develop an explanation based on the geographic conception of place, and we use contentious politics theory heuristically to elucidate the ways in which general processes interact with place-specific history to engender a landscape of violence. In so doing, we focus on environmental, cognitive, and relational mechanisms (and implicated structures), and attempt to deploy them in an explanatory framework that allows direct observation of the accumulating layers of the region's tragic history. We end by placing our discussion within a political ecological context, and consider the implications of the Amazon Land War for the environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students in a graduate seminar at Michigan State University produced a series of detailed vegetation, soils, and landform maps of a 1.5-square-mile (3.9 km2) study area in southwest Lower Michigan. The learning outcomes (maps) and skill development objectives (sampling strategies and various GIS applications) of this field-intensive mapping experience were driven by the assumption that students learn and understand relationships among physical landscape variables better by mapping them than they would in a classroom-based experience. The group-based, problem-solving format was also intended to foster collaboration and camaraderie. The study area lies within a complex, interlobate moraine. Fieldwork involved mapping in groups of two or three, as well as soil and vegetation sampling. Spatial data products assembled and used in the project included topographic maps, a digital elevation model (DEM), aerial photographs, and NRCS (National Resource Conservation Service) soil maps. Most of the soils are dry and sandy, with the main differentiating characteristic being the amount of, and depth to, subsurface clay bands (lamellae) or gravelly zones. The presettlement (early 1830s) vegetation of the area was oak forest, oak savanna, and black oak “barrens.” Upland sites currently support closed forests of white, black, and red oak, with a red maple, dogwood, and sassafras understory. Ecological data suggest that these oak forests will, barring major disturbance, become increasingly dominated by red maple. This group-based, problem-solving approach to physical geography education has several advantages over traditional classroom-based teaching and could also be successfully applied in other, field-related disciplines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]