Amazon Rainforest Vanishing at Twice Rate of Previous Estimates

[callady]

Amazon rainforest vanishing at twice rate of previous estimates

· 6,000 sq miles lost a year as valuable trees removed
· Selective logging causing 25% greenhouse gas boost

Alok Jha, science correspondent
Friday October 21, 2005
The Guardian


The Amazonian rainforest is being destroyed at double the rate of all previous estimates, according to research published today in the journal Science. The destruction is leaving the forest more prone to fires and allowing more carbon dioxide to be released into the atmosphere, according to scientists.

A new analysis of satellite images of the Brazilian part of the Amazon basin, which forms part of the largest contiguous rainforest on Earth, shows that on average 15,500 sq km (6,000 square miles) of forest is being cut down by selective logging each year. This is besides a similar amount clear-cut annually for cattle grazing or farming.

Conservationists have been able to monitor large clear-cut areas using satellite images. But the extent of selective logging, where individual trees of high value, such as mahogany, are felled and smuggled out of the forest, had been unclear, the effects being masked from satellites by the forest's dense canopy.

"People have been monitoring large-scale deforestation in the Amazon with satellites for more than two decades, but selective logging has been mostly invisible until now," said Gregory Asner, of the Carnegie Institution, Washington. He tackled the problem by developing an analytical method named the Carnegie Landsat Analysis System, which allows each pixel of an image to be scrutinised for the amount of forest left to determine the overall ratio of forested to deforested land.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/conservation/story/0,13369,1597398,00.html

[file83]

1. Wonderful. I don't need that irritating ecosystem anyhoo. *cough*

Sarcasm aside, good post!

[callady]

2. This makes political scandals

seem trivial to me. It's very sad.

How to stop the devastation.

[file83]

6. You're absolutely right, but political scandals are how this kind of crap

is allowed to continue. Corruption. From beginning to end. Corruption. Political Corruption. Greed and politics are what allows those bulldozers and clear cutters to continue raping the jungle.

Nature has/had so much to offer us - and we beat her down. The greedful mind thinks like this:
Why allow nature to supply for FREE, what we could supply for a PROFIT?

[blindpig]

13. True to a degree

but that curruption simply intensifies the damage done by a system that is in itself heedless of the long term. And I'm not speaking of just Capitalism though it is very bad itself. Agriculture and pastoralism have been the primary causes of desertifcation since the beginning of civilization. Consider Iraq, a pretty green place before Ur, Sumer and those other early cities subjected the land for a few thousand years to to the plow and livestock.

I think we're smart enough to do better but I doubt we will.

[MarsThe Cat]

3. i think that carole king said it best, and sums it up about global warming

"It's Too late baby, It's Too late, But we really did try to make it..."

[Erika]

4. Yes, the W voters can look at their grandchildren and

say, we damned your generation to hell while we had fun in the sun.

[Lorien]

11. They've damned OUR generation to hell

climate change could cause our extinction within the next 50 years.

[0rganism]

5. homo sapiens: first species to make fouling our nests into a full-time job

Damage done, no turning back now. The coming die-offs and mass extinctions will make our current troubles seem like halcyon days of yesteryear.

[Gregorian]

7. Shit

[Lorien]

8. Extensive damage to Amazon

Extensive damage to Amazon
New technology shows that 'selective logging' causes severe destruction to Brazil's rainforest


SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE

October 21, 2005

With a computer-aided look, researchers report today that twice as much of the Amazon rain-forest basin has been disturbed by tree-cutting than previously thought.
Satellite imaging to measure deforestation has been capable of detecting only clear-cut swaths of land, where all the trees have been removed or burned to allow farming or cattle grazing.

Now, a new satellite-imaging system developed by researchers at Carnegie Institution in Washington and Stanford University in California can spot the loss of forest canopy on a finer scale, allowing them to take into account areas where a few trees have been thinned.

(snip)

Asner's team discovered that each year, "an area about the size of Connecticut is disturbed this way. Selective logging negatively impacts many plants and animals and increases erosion and fires. Additionally, up to 25 percent more carbon is released to the atmosphere each year, above that from clear-cutting, by decomposition of what the loggers leave behind."

More: http://www.newsday.com/news/health/ny-hs4477728oct21,0,2722477.story?coll=ny-health-headlines

[superconnected]

9. the just noticed 2x as much as they though had been cut... now?

how odd. In a corrupt sort of way.

[Lorien]

10. New method of computer imagery from satellite photos

they could only view clear cut areas previously.

They scary part is the 25% increase in CO2 emissions-leading to faster global warming. :-(

[cyberpj]

12. There's a reason - it's in the article:

Conservationists have been able to monitor large clear-cut areas using satellite images. But the extent of selective logging, where individual trees of high value, such as mahogany, are felled and smuggled out of the forest, had been unclear, the effects being masked from satellites by the forest's dense canopy.

"People have been monitoring large-scale deforestation in the Amazon with satellites for more than two decades, but selective logging has been mostly invisible until now," said Gregory Asner, of the Carnegie Institution, Washington. He tackled the problem by developing an analytical method named the Carnegie Landsat Analysis System, which allows each pixel of an image to be scrutinised for the amount of forest left to determine the overall ratio of forested to deforested land.

[callady]

15. Causes for Deforestation in the Amazon

DEFORESTATION IN THE AMAZON

Between August 2004 and August 2004, Brazil

[cyberpj]

18. Good article. Thanks. In relation to the farms, read RS article on slavery

Rolling Stone
Heart of Darkness
Inside the dangerous race to liberate tens of thousands of slaves in Brazil
By OSHA GRAY DAVIDSON

snip...
Although Brazil outlawed slavery in 1888, landowners like Manica continue to hold thousands of men captive in the vast scrublands of Brasil Profundo -- Deep Brazil -- a desolate, sun-scorched region that sprawls across a million square miles in the country's vast interior. It's a brutal, lawless land, where drugs and small arms flow north through the "cocaine corridor" and mahogany and other rare woods stripped from the rain forest make their way to American furniture showrooms. Here, on huge cattle ranches and farms known as fazendas, enslaved men are forced to work without pay from sunrise to sunset under inhumane conditions. Those who refuse to follow orders are beaten and tortured; those who demand payment or attempt to flee are killed, their bodies mutilated and dumped in unmarked graves. Human-rights advocates in Brazil have documented the murders of more than 1,200 forced laborers, and many more killings are passed off as farming mishaps. One recent "accident" victim, a twenty-year-old named Carlos Dias, was killed by a bullet fired into his eye. "It's like your Wild West," Moreira says. "In the hinterland, the landowner is king."

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/7582795?pageid=rs.News&pageregion=single1&rnd=1126231891963&has-player=unknown

[callady]

21. The Rape of the Rainforest and the Man Behind It

The Rape of the Rainforest... and the Man Behind it

by Michael McCarthy and Andrew Buncombe

He is Blairo Maggi, the millionaire farmer and uncompromising politician presiding over the Brazilian boom in soya bean production. He is known in Brazil as O Rei da Soja - the King of Soy.

Brazilian environmentalists are calling him something else - the King of Deforestation. For the soya boom, feeding a seemingly insatiable world market for soya beans as cattle feed, is now the main driver of rainforest destruction.

<snip>

Mr Maggi sheds no tears over lost trees. In 2003, his first year as governor, the rate of deforestation in Mato Grosso more than doubled.

In an interview last year he said: "To me, a 40 per cent increase in deforestation doesn't mean anything at all, and I don't feel the slightest guilt over what we are doing here. We are talking about an area larger than Europe that has barely been touched, so there is nothing at all to get worried about."

Many people violently disagree. The survival of the Amazon forest, which sprawls over 4.1 million sq km (1.6 million sq miles) and covers more than half of Brazil's land area, may be the key to the survival of the planet. The jungle is sometimes called the world's "lung" because its trees produce much of the world's oxygen. It is thought nearly 20 per cent of it has already been destroyed by legal and illegal logging, and clearance for cattle ranching. But the soya boom has dramatically stepped up the pace of destruction.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0520-06.htm

[newyawker99]

14. It is a shame what is being done to our

environment. It wont be long before
we will have nothing left.



:grr:


:argh:

[flvegan]

16. One of the big reasons I no longer eat meat.

Cattle grazing? Production of soy (to feed said, and other, cattle)?

Not me.

[callady]

17. Same Here- I contend if there is one thing anyone can do to slow

deforestation and slow global warming it is to have nothing to do with cattle. Every bit helps.

I'm not a strict vegetarian but rarely eat meat and when I do it's only if it is local and I know the source.



The Price of Cheap Beef: Disease, Deforestation, Slavery and Murder
If it's unethical to eat British beef, it's 100 times worse to eat Brazilian - but imports have nearly doubled this year


by George Monbiot

Until 1990 Brazil produced only enough beef to feed itself. Since then its cattle herd has grown by some 50 million, and the country has become, according to some estimates, the world's biggest exporter: it now sells 1.9m tons a year. The United Kingdom is its fourth-largest customer, after Russia, Egypt and Chile. One region is responsible for 80% of the growth in Brazilian beef production. It's the Amazon.

The past three years have been the most destructive in the Brazilian Amazon's history. In 2004 26,000 sq. km of rainforest were burned: the second-highest rate on record. This year could be worse. And most of it is driven by cattle ranching.

According to the Center for International Forestry Research, cattle pasture accounts for six times more cleared land in the Amazon than crop land: even the notorious soya farmers, who have plowed some 5m hectares of former rainforest, cover just one-tenth of the ground taken by the beef producers. The four Amazon states in which the most beef is produced are the four with the highest deforestation rates.

Cattle ranching, if it keeps expanding in the Amazon, threatens two-fifths of the world's remaining rainforest. This is not just the most diverse ecosystem but also the biggest reserve of standing carbon. Its clearance could provoke a hydrological disaster in South America, as rainfall is reduced as the trees come down. Next time you see footage of the forest burning, remember that you might have paid for it.

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1018-31.htm

[Lorien]

19. Excellent article. I gave up red meat 12 years ago for those reasons

and the concern over mad cow. Most people are unaware that their love of beef is contributing to the end of our species. The world's rainforests are critical to the survival of most lifeforms, including us.

[callady]

20. A Case Study in Globalization

and how destructive it is. Trying to explain and unpack this to the consumer is daunting but not impossible.


Several factors have spurred recent Brazil's growth as a producer of beef:
• CURRENCY DEVALUATION -- the devaluation of the Brazilian real against the dollar effectively doubled the price of beef in reais and created an incentive for ranchers to expand their pasture areas at the expense of the rainforest. The weakness of the real also made Brazilian beef more competitive on the world market .
• CONTROL OVER FOOT-AND-MOUTH DISEASE -- The eradication of Foot-and-Mouth Disease in much of Brazil has increased price and demand for Brazilian beef.
• INFRASTRUCTURE -- Road construction gives developers and ranchers access to previously inaccessible forest lands in the Amazon. Infrastructure improvements can reduce the costs of shipping and packing beef.
• INTEREST RATES -- Rainforest lands are often used for land speculation purposes. When real pasture land prices exceed real forest land prices, land-clearing is a good hedge against inflation. At times of high inflation, the appreciation of cattle prices and the stream of services (milk) they provide may outpace the interest rate earned on money left in the bank.
• LAND TENURE LAWS -- In Brazil, colonists and developers can gain title to Amazon lands by simply clearing forest and placing a few head of cattle on the land. As an additional benefit, cattle are a low risk investment relative to cash crops which are subject to wild price swings and pest infestations. Essentially cattle are a vehicle for land ownership in the Amazon.

http://www.mongabay.com/brazil.html