El Nino Strikes Deep Into Amazonia
11/21/97
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Headline: El Nino Strikes Deep Into Amazonia
Source: InterPress Service
Date: 11/21/97
Author: Mario Osava
Copyright 1997: InterPress Service, all rights reserved.
Worldwide distribution via the APC networks.
RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 21 (IPS) - Freakish weather attributed to the
phenomenon known as El Nino - a warm Pacific current - is causing
one of the most prolonged and intense droughts in the history of
the Amazonian region. This, on top of the usual environmental
hazards such as fires and deforestation has made 1997 a year of
horror for Brazil.
The scarcity of rain has caused a drop in water levels right
along ther Amazon River, dried up areas that are usually flooded,
and altered ecological conditions so as to increase the likelihood
of fires, which already have destroyed millions of hectares of
forest.
For the first time, Manaos - capital of the state of Amazonia,
and a center which has suffered relatively little deforestation -
was immersed in smoke and was forced to shut down its airport for
several days. A similar scenario is affecting the southern and
eastern parts of the country, where agriculture has been expanding
by burning down sections of forests.
The current drought is due to a combination of two factors - a
prolonged dry season caused by El Nino, and the paving of the
highway that connects Manaos with the Venezuelan border, said
Carlos Nobre, an expert in meteorology at the National Institute
of Space Research (INPE).
In the decade of the 1970s and the beginning of the 80s, the
government used tax incentives to foment livestock-raising in the
area north of Manaos, which was later abandoned when it became
deforested.
The vegetation was beginning to regenerate, just when ''the
asphalt came'' last year, allowing better access to the region and
stimulating economic recovery, Nobre said
Other factors contributed to this process of deforestation,
considered the worst of the Amazonian forest, said Alberto Setzer,
also a researcher at the INPE which monitors forest fires through
a system of satellite images.
New legislation which raised the mandatory percentage of
preserved area in each Amazonian property from 50 to 80 percent,
had the opposite effect in the short term. It urged landowners to
deforest their land, in order to register it as cultivated land,
Setzer explained.
Brazil's economic growth since the stabilization of the
currency in 1994 also stimulated greater land use and the
execution of new projects.
''El Nino was only one of the factors,'' although an important
one, Setzer said. The drought led to "many forest fires that could
not be controlled" by those who provoke them, surpassing the
borders of their respective properties and even reaching
neighboring original forests, he added.
Another problem is that the scarcity of rainfall has affected
the heart of the Amazonian region and its most vital element:
water. The water level has rarely been so low, while lagoons and
related ecosystems have become isolated. The full gravity of the
situation will only be known in the medium term.
For the past several weeks Manaos has been without electricity
for about six hours a day, because the water shortage diminishes
the capacity of the hydro-electric dams.
Some cities have been deprived of their only means of
transportation - rivers - because they are not deep enough for
larger boats.
Many recently hatched turtles are dying of dehydration, because
their nests are now far from the rivers or lagoons - due to
irregular ebbs and flows - explained biologist Juarez Brito
Pezzuti, who wrote his Master's thesis on the behavior of
Amazonian tortoises.
In his fieldwork, conducted in 1996, Pezzuti found that the
birth rates of tortoises is declining rapidly, mainly due to human
consumption of their eggs, but also because their nests are
flooded regularly.
Now, with the drought, there is no water to drown the eggs, and
an increase in animal mortality due to thirst and greater exposure
to their natural predators, which are '' much more concentrated in
much smaller volumes of water,'' he said.
''We are sure, although not absolutely sure, that the level of
rainfall - far below the average - is due to El Nino.'' This
occurred once in 1983, when the waters of the Pacific reached
unusually high temperatures, said Carlos Nobre.
The lack of rainfall has affected especially the center-north
and northeast of the Amazonian region, extending from northern
Brazil up to Venezuela, Suriname and Guyana, he said.
But there is no telling what will happen in the coming months.
''The effects of El Nino are different every time,'' said the
researcher.
In any case, even if the rain does return soon, it will be
several months before river levels return to normal, especially in
the northern tributaries of the Amazon, concluded Nobre.