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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

Bad Amazon News: Deforestation Up 21% in Rondonia & Fires Intensify

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Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises

http://forests.org/

12/17/97

OVERVIEW, SOURCE & COMMENTARY by EE

Following are two items that relay more bad news for the Amazon.

SEJUP reveals that deforestation in Rondonia State has increased by

20.6% during the last two years. The Environmental Defense Fund

indicates that based on satellite images, the number of fires in the

Brazilian Amazon between July and November increased over 50% between

1996 and 1997. There is persistent and ominous change occurring in

the World's biological systems, evident in rainforests, as the forces

of biological diminishment are not being balanced by

regeneration/renewal. The Amazon's spiral into a much-reduced

ecological state is intensifying. Planetary well being depends upon

maintenance of healthy managed and preserved forests--of which the

Amazon is of course foremost. Loss of the remaining intact forest

ecosystems will have implications for us all.

g.b.

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ITEM #1

Title: Deforestation in Rondonia increases by 20.6%

Source: SEJUP

Status: Distribute freely with accreditation

Date: December 4, 1997

=================================================================

NEWS FROM BRAZIL supplied by SEJUP (Servico Brasileiro de Justica

e Paz).

Number 295, December 04,

1997.=================================================================

ECOLOGY

- Deforestation in Rondonia increases by 20.6%

According to data of the State Environmental Secretariat of

the State of Rondonia quoted in the 'Folha de Sao Paulo' on

November 30, deforestation in the state has increased by 20.6%

during the last two years. Until 1994, 4267228 hectares had been

deforested there. At the end of 1996 the area with forest cleared

in the state amounted to 5149386 hectares or 21.6% of the area of

the entire state.

''By the end of the current year we expect that the total

area deforested will reach 5.4 million hectares which is 22.7% of

the state.... There is a tendency for the deforestation rate to

even out but the problem is that this stabilization is taking

place when deforestation rates are very high'' commented forester

Ernaldo Matricardi, a functionary of the State Secretariat, in

the Folha report. He forecasts that approximately 270 thousand

hectares (1.1% of the total area of the state) will be deforested

during the current year - a figure close to that of last year.

According to Mr. Matricardi the worse period of deforestation was

between 1993 and 1995 when the Brazilian economy showed a renewed

growth - ''During this period deforestation was significantly

higher when compared to previous years'' he commented.

A number of reasons seem to be largely responsible;e for the

high rates of deforestation at that time - the increase in cattle

ranching and the occupation of new areas along the BR-429 and BR-

421 highways. Another reason was that a number of ranchers

cleared large areas on their properties at the time in order to

escape having their lands classified as unused and there apt for

exappropriation for agrarian reform projects.

The Folha article quotes Roberto Smeraldi, director of the

Brazilian office of the Friends of the Earth as commenting that

what is happening in Rondonia indicates that the same is

happening in other Amazonian states. The conclusions of the

Rondonia State Secretariat were based on data taken from the

Landsat satellite.

Meanwhile the National Institute of Space Surveys (INPE)

announced that new deforestation data referring to the Amazonian

region for 1995 and 1996 due to be publish last week would be

ready by mid December. A spokesperson for the Institute commented

that the delay was due to difficulties in analyzing some of the

images sent by the Landsat satellite. The spokesperson denied

that the Institute was delaying publication of the data until

after the Kyoto International Convention which finishes on

December 10. Some environmental activists suspect that if the

data were released before the Convention Brazil would be

suspected to very severe criticism for the increasing rate of

deforestation in the Amazonian region.

ITEM #1

Title: Fires in the Amazon: an analysis of NOAA-12 satellite data

Source: Environmental Defense Fund

Status: Distribute freely with accreditation

Date: December 1, 1997

ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND

1875 Connecticut Ave., NW, 10th Fl.

Washington, D.C. 20009

Telephone: (202) 387-3500

Facsimile: (202) 234-6049; steves@edf.org

Fires in the Amazon:

an analysis of NOAA-12 satellite data, 1996 - 1997.

Stephan Schwartzman

December 1, 1997

The number of fires in the Brazilian Amazon between July

and November increased over 50% between 1996 and 1997. The

NOAA-12 satellite recorded 29,571 fires in the Amazon region on

136 days between July 1, 1996 and November 30, 1996 and 44,734

fires on 118 days between July 1, 1997 and November 22, 1997, an

increase of over 50% from 1996 to 1997, even though data are

available for fewer days in 1997 than in 1996. The average

number of fires per day increased 75%, from 217 in 1996, to 379

in 1997. A previous analysis, based on a more limited sample

earlier in the year, had shown a smaller increase. 1/

The data are generated by the Advanced Very High Resolution

Radiometer (AVHRR) on the NOAA-12 weather satellite, which

detects thermal anomalies, and passes over the Amazon daily.

Fires are mapped and counted by the National Institute for Space

Research (INPE) in Brazil (http://condor.dsa.inpe.br/mapas_que).

The largest differences between the two years occurred in

November and October, and result from increased economic

activity, particularly burning of cattle pasture. The difference

also reflects the extended dry season of 1997 caused by El Nino.

Normally seasonal rains start in late September or early October

in most of the Amazon, curtailing fires. 5/ In 1997, airports

were still closing because of thick haze in November. The

satellite recorded 2,638 fires in 22 days in November 1997, as

opposed to 1,542 in 27 days in November 1996, an increase of

71%, over fewer days. In October 1997, 10,305 fires appear in 28

days, over three times more than the 3,119 counted for 26 days

in October 1996.

The actual number of fires in the Amazon in both years is

considerably higher than the totals obtained by the NOAA-12

satellite, for two reasons. The NOAA satellites, because of their

trajectories and the locations of current receiving stations,

cover the northern and western Amazon poorly. In addition, the

NOAA-12 satellite passes over the region at night, when the

number of fires is lower than during the day. INPE stopped

analyzing NOAA-14 images, taken during the day, for the burning

season of 1996, arguing that solar reflection on hot days could

be confused with fires by the satellite's sensors and inflate the

number of fires. While the NOAA-12 images thus under-count

fires, comparison of data sets from different years does show

changes in the level of burning.

New research from the region strongly suggests that fires

themselves are rapidly becoming at least as great a threat to the

biological integrity of the Amazon as is deforestation, as well

as increasing Brazil's contribution to global CO2 and other

greenhouse gas emissions. Fires are set in the Amazon to burn off

cleared primary forest, and also to burn old cattle pastures and

secondary forest areas. Deforestation per se accounts for only a

relatively small part of the fires every year. Some 70% of the

fires burn on land already deforested. 2/

The Woods Hole Research Center and the Institute for

Amazonian Environmental Research (IPAM) have shown that

selective logging and ground fires - fires that burn largely

undetected by the satellites, beneath the forest canopy - are

degrading an area approximately equal to the area deforested

annually in recent years. Selective logging, as studies by the

Institute for Man and Nature in the Amazon (IMAZON) show,

contributes to the flammability of the forest through opening up

the canopy and leaving combustible material behind. 3/ Ground

fires, often in previously logged areas or areas bordering

already deforested lands, in conjunction with dry weather, are

making the forest dryer. The increased burning this year means

that ground fires, which may cover hundreds or even thousands of

square kilometers, also increased, even though they do not

appear in the satellite images. Deforestation, according to

INPE's last figures (for 1994), was about 15,000 square

kilometers a year. This means that a similar area, unrecorded by

satellite images, is being degraded through selective logging

and ground fires annually.

The Woods Hole, IMAZON and other new findings indicate that

CO2 emissions and other global climatic effects of Amazon fires

have heretofore been underestimated, by as much as 30%. Recent

long- term research on forest fragments in the Amazon shows that

up to 36% of biomass is lost in fragments within 100 meters of

edges in the first 10 - 17 years after fragmentation. The

authors conclude that decline in biomass in forest fragments

could be a significant, and uncounted, source of greenhouse

gases such as CO2. 4/

The Woods Hole Research Center/IPAM research on fires has

identified an alarming new trend. Much of the forest of the

eastern and southern Amazon, which depends on deep-soil water

reserves to stay green in the dry season, is becoming flammable

because of logging and drought. Hitherto, virgin forest has

prevented the spread of fires because it was too moist to burn.

Should large parts of the intact forest dry out enough to burn,

as appears to be occurring, much quicker and larger scale

destruction of the forest becomes possible, in a vicious circle

of drying - larger fires - more drying. The Woods Hole group set

an experimental fire in intact closed forest in Par? state for

the first time this year. These results show that the rate of

deforestation of formerly intact primary forest, as measured by

analysis of Landsat images - formerly considered the central

indicator of forest destruction -- is no longer the only

significant, or even the most urgent, threat to the forest.

Should intact closed forest begin to burn, a previously

incremental process (the loss of 0.4%, or 0.5% of the forested

area of the Amazon to deforestation yearly, as was the case in

the 1980s and 1990s) could become a catastrophic positive

feedback loop. Climate models predict a slightly drier climate in

tropical areas under global warming.

While increased burning involves hundreds of thousands of

actors spread across a continental region, much can be done to

address the problem. One half of the area burned in 1994 and

1995 resulted from accidental fires . These fires have

substantial costs for small and large farmers alike and benefit

no one. Efforts to assist rural Amazonians to prevent accidental

fires (through fire breaks or enforcing compensation for fires

that damage others' property), and to rely less on the use of

fire for agriculture (through mechanization) would make a

difference. In addition, passage of the Environmental Crimes

Act, currently stalled in the Brazilian House of

Representatives, would give the Brazilian environmental agency,

IBAMA, statutory authority to enforce the law, including

restrictions on burning and deforestation, for the first time

since 1989.

Whether or not deforestation rates have increased in the

Amazon will only be known with the release of INPE's analysis of

Landsat images. INPE has promised to release data for 1995 and

1996 by end of the year. Increased burning, and new research

results on the effects of fire, however, unequivocally

demonstrate that the rate of deforestation is no longer the only

important indicator of threat to the biological integrity of the

Amazon forest. Under current conditions of drought stress, fire

itself may rapidly become the vector of greater and much quicker

destruction than previously imagined possible, with potentially

enormous global repercussions.

Notes:

1. Fires in the Amazon - an analysis of NOAA 12 satellite data

1996 - 1997. Environmental Defense Fund, September 23, 1997.

2. Fires in the Brazilian Amazon: The Story from the Ground.

November 1997. Woods Hole Research Center.

3 Fire as a recurrent event in tropical forests of the eastern

Amazon. Mark Cochrane and M. Schulze, in press. Biotropic.

4. Biomass collapse in Amazonian forest fragments. W.F.

Laurance et al, Science, Vol. 278, 7 November 1997 pp 1117-

1118.

5. Fires in Brazilian Amazonia: The story from the ground.

Ibid.

Summary of Analysis for 1996

July 1740

Aug 10293

Sep 12877

Oct 3119

Nov 1542

Actual Fires Counted 29571

Number of Days in Period 153

Data Days Available 136

Average No. Counted per day 217

Summary of Analysis for 1997

July 2453

Aug 14986

Sep 14352

Oct 10305

Nov 2638

Actual Fires Counted 44734

Number of Days in Period 153

Data Days Available 118

Average No. Counted per day 379

Note: Daily fire totals broken down by state are available on

request for July-November for 1996 and 1997.

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