for a Plantation of Tamarugo (Prosopis tamarugo) in the Atacama Desert, Chile.

One of the biggest natural resource conservation problems present in non-developed countries is the insufficient rural developing. By looking for goods and services, a rising number of rural communities have no other option than to use up the vegetation in huge surfaces, producing acceleration in the desertification processes. The rural communities responsible of this environmental damage often know the situation that they provoke, looking powerless the decreasing food and fuel shortage. In 1970, the Chilean Government established about 5,000 hectares of tamarugo (Prosopis tamarugo), close to San Pedro de Atacama town, located in the Atacama Desert, at the north part of Chile. The zone is characterized by its poor soils and the absent of rain during the whole year. Because of some causes, there is a remaining of about 800 hectares as a whole, and the biggest plantation has about 535 hectares, which is fundamental for the surviving of many people (animals, fuel, and tourism, among others). This plantation was characterized in this study, founding some places with very good trees, as well as others with suppressed ones. These differences could be due to soil characteristics, according to the soil analysis. The study proposed some silvicultural treatments with the objective of optimizing the resource, assuring it to the future communities