Satellite Data on Amazon Destruction Tell Only Fraction, Fires Worse Than
Feared
10/9/97
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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Headline: Satellite Data on Amazon Destruction Tell Only Fraction, Fires
Worse Than Feared
Source: ABCNews
Date: 10/9/97
Author: Dorian Benkoil
Copyright 1997 ABCNews and Starwave Corporation This
material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed in
any form.
Oct. 9 - On a recent cloudless day in a rural
Amazon town, a thick cloud of haze made the
sun a barely visible disk of light.
The smoke wafting in from as much as 30
miles away, choking Guarant , came from forest
fires that are raging across Brazil's dense
jungle, destroying the world's largest
absorber of the greenhouse gases that
contribute to global warming.
"I've never seen it so bad," said Steve
Schwartzman, a scientist with the
Washington-based Environmental Defense Fund
who has worked in the region for 15 years. "I
got sick myself. I got a respiratory
infection."
Fires decimating the forests of densely
populated Southeast Asia also have received
widespread attention recently for the air
pollution they're causing that has blanketed
major cities from Singapore to Jakarta.
But the raging fires in Brazil dwarf the
ones in Indonesia and Malaysia and ultimately
could pose a larger threat to the rain
forest's rare and uncharted animal species,
the supply of breathable air, and even the
world's climate.
Alarming New Details show that the Amazon-the world's
largest rainforest-is burning at an alarming
rate, adding to the 12-13 percent it has
already lost.
President Clinton in a trip to Brazil
next week will tell Brazilians that U.S.
satellite data show increasing devastation.
But the satellites tell only half of the problem,
according to the Massachusetts-based
Woods Hole Research Center, which says that
under the forest canopy through which the
satellites can't see, thousands of additional
square miles of undergrowth is burning.
As ranchers, loggers and others set fires
to clear areas for cattle grazing and roads,
those fires have parched normally humid and
moist areas, and dry weather has further
sucked up water that has usually stopped fires
on the ground.
Hidden Burning
"For every hectare that we know about that's
cleared and burned and is easy to map with
high resolution satellites, an equal area is
being impoverished beneath the canopy," Woods
Hole scientist Daniel Neptad said from the
Amazon, where he is conducting further
research.
And combined with the drought-causing
effects of the El Nio weather pattern, the
forest could be in for even more decimation.
Brazil already is having an unusually dry
rainy season.
"If the El Nio effect that's causing the
burnings this year in the Amazon to be worse
than ever before continues," Schwartzman said,
"next year you could see fires in the Amazon
that makes everything's that's happened up
until now look like kindergartners playing
with matches."