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WORLDWIDE
FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS
Fears
of a Fiery Amazon Nightmare
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Forest
Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises
http://forests.org/
12/9/97
OVERVIEW,
SOURCE & COMMENTARY by EE
Recent
scientific research indicates that the Amazonian fire hazard is
much
increased. The following Associated
Press coverage of recent
Woods
Hole Research Center research indicates that the threat posed to
the
Amazon's continued integrity has "gone from a slow, incremental
process
of cutting virgin rain forest to a potentially catastrophic
situation." Logging, as currently practiced, and other
encroachment
into
the remaining lowland rainforest expanses of the World are
dramatically
changing canopy structure with resultant changes in
micro-climate. More grassy and bushy growth, increased
evaporation,
and
resultant dry conditions are making rainforest ecosystems
increasingly
flammable. The relatively recent
incursions of large
scale
logging into Indonesia and now Brazil illustrate this fact, and
pose a
tremendous threat to the World's ecological well-being.
Clearly
if any logging of remaining closed canopy rainforests is to
occur,
there must be a paradigm shift as to what management practices
are
acceptable. Highly selective,
low-impact logging mechanisms may
well be
the only manner in which rainforests under management can be
maintained. And even this must occur within a landscape
that is
mostly
composed of intact, closed canopy forests.
g.b.
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TEXT STARTS HERE:
Title: Fears of a fiery Amazon nightmare
7-year study has implications for
the global warming debate
Source: ASSOCIATED PRESS
Status: Copyrighted 1997, contact source for
reprint permissions
Date: December 7, 1997
Byline: By Todd Lewan
At
least half of the Amazon rain forest is a tinderbox ready to go up
in
smoke, raising the specter of an ecological disaster that may wipe
out the
world's largest wilderness. About 12 percent of the 2-million-
square-mile
jungle is already gone, and burning has been so intense in
recent
months that a lake caught fire and people are being treated for
respiratory
ailments.
A NEW
SEVEN-YEAR study suggests the burning may get much worse: The
rain
forest -even at its pristine core - is dangerously dry and
flammable
because of logging, deliberate burning around its edges and
El
Ni¤o. The Associated Press obtained the research this week.
In one
test in October, American and Brazilian scientists threw a
match
on kerosene that had been sprinkled in a small parcel of
undisturbed
jungle in Paragominas in the eastern Amazon. Normally the
moist
vegetation wouldn't catch.
But
this time, 300 acres went up in flames.
"We're
on the edge of a catastrophe,"said Daniel Nepstad, a scientist
for the
Woods Hole Research Center, a Massachusetts-based institute
that
conducted the research at five test sites across the Brazilian
rain
forest.
"A
lot of the Amazon has lost its capacity to protect itself from
fire.
When the forest is this dry, small fires can turn into giant
ones
and take off into primary forests."
Steve
Schwartzman, director of the Environmental Defense Fund, said
the
research shows that the danger to the rain forest "has been taken
to
another level."
"Suddenly,
it's gone from a slow, incremental process of cutting
virgin
rain forest to a potentially catastrophic situation," he said.
THE
GLOBAL WARMING CONNECTION
The
alarm comes as representatives from more than 150 nations gather
in
Kyoto, Japan in hopes of finding solutions to global warming, which
some
scientists say is worsened by the burning of rain forests.
Tropical
forests absorb large amounts of carbon dioxide, one of the
gases
that traps solar heat and is thought to increase global warming.
Also,
the burning adds to the atmosphere's carbon accumulation.
And
this year, the Amazon and other rain forests have been scorched
like
never before. Burning of Indonesian forests has released as much
carbon
in 1997 as all fossil fuel emissions in Europe.
"If
you put Indonesian burning and Amazon burning together, you'd see
that
more of the world was on fire in 1997 than ever in recorded
history,"
said Thomas Lovejoy, an ecological consultant at the
Smithsonian
Institution in Washington.
Philip
Fearnside, an American scientist at Brazil's National Institute
for
Amazon Research in Manaus, said burning half of the Amazon would
release
35 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere - the
equivalent
of six years' worth of worldwide fossil fuel emissions.
"That'll
turn up global warming a notch," he said.
FIRST
HARD EVIDENCE
The
Woods Hole research is the first hard evidence that suggests the
Indonesia
scenario may soon be repeated across the Amazon.
In
October, researchers dug 35-foot shafts into the clay soil of
unlogged
Brazilian rain forest at five different sites. Several years
earlier,
they had struck water deposits thick at that depth.
This
time, nothing.
Next,
scientists tested the forests with kerosene and matches. "All of
the
fires just took off," said Nepstad.
That
wouldn't have happened if trees had deep-soil water "pools" to
tap,
said Nepstad. Normally, trees suck up the underground water
through
their roots and pump vapor out through their leaves. That
saturates
the atmosphere and triggers rain.
But the
pools have dried up across the Amazon in the last two years,
partly
because of a drought brought on by El Ni¤o, the ocean-
atmosphere
phenomenon that has been disrupting weather patterns around
the
globe.
Farmers
who burn scrub in cleared areas to fertilize the weak soil are
drying
out underground pockets of water in adjacent forest. And
logging
of precious hardwoods in scattered patches opens holes in the
Amazon
canopy and permits more sunlight to enter the forest, drying
the
air, soil and ground.
Drought
makes trees shed their leaves, allowing more sunlight to parch
the
soil. "It becomes a vicious cycle," said Nepstad.
"Maybe
God will smile on us and we'll get seven straight years of
astounding
rains in the Amazon and put the issue on different
footing,"
said Schwartzman. "But with El Ni¤o here, don't count on
it."
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