Amazon Rain Forest Fading Faster Than Thought

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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

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4/9/99

OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by EE

New techniques for quantifying Amazon rainforest loss indict that the

Amazon is being destroyed twice as fast as previously believed. Good

gracious, is this going to hit us hard later on.

g.b.

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ITEM #1

Title: Report: Amazon Rain Forest Fading

Source: Associated Press

Date: 4/8/99

Byline: JEFF DONN Associated Press Writer

The Amazon rain forest is being destroyed twice as fast as previously

believed, according to a study published today that relies on new

techniques for measuring deforestation.

The researchers concluded that satellite images - the traditional tool

for gauging deforestation - were missing much of the damage from

logging and fires set to clear land for farming or pasture. Selective

logging is difficult to detect by satellite, and new growth quickly

hides fire damage as viewed from above.

Instead, the researchers relied on interviews with 1,393 wood mill

operators and 202 landholders, and checked the effect of fires from an

airplane at 1,104 sample points in the 1.3 million-square-mile rain

forest.

They put the loss at 17,000 square miles last year, or three times the

official Brazilian estimate of 5,700. But 1998 was an especially bad

year because of an El Nino drought, and they estimated that in an

average year, actual damage is at least twice the official, satellite-

based estimate.

``It's perhaps even more frightening,'' said Bill Mankin, director of

the Global Forest Policy Project of two major environmental groups.

``It's going to creep up on us, and people may not even be crafting a

solution because they don't realize there's a problem.''

The study by ecologist Daniel C. Nepstad of the Woods Hole Research

Center in Massachusetts and colleagues at the Institute of

Environmental Research in Belem, Brazil, was published in today's

issue of the journal Nature.

Nepstad estimated that 217,000 square miles, or 16 percent, of the

original rain forest has been spoiled over the years. The official

Brazilian estimate is 13 percent.

``All these estimates are quite conservative. The problem could be

bigger,'' Nepstad said.

Eduardo Martins, head of Brazil's environmental protection agency,

said he had not seen the study and declined to comment. Environment

Minister Jose Sarney Filho was in Paris and unavailable for comment,

his office said.

The findings trouble some scientists and environmentalists because

perhaps a third of the world's plant and animal species live in the

rain forest.

``As we lose species, we don't know which one is the critical one, the

keystone species that results in the whole system falling apart,''

said Robert L. Sanford Jr., a University of Denver ecologist.

The researchers also worry about huge quantities of carbon dioxide

entering the atmosphere from the fires and rotting wood left by

loggers. Carbon dioxide is thought to cause global warming.

Also, some scientists fear that damage to the rain forest, which gives

off enormous amounts of water vapor and keeps the ground from drying

out, could throw the Earth's climate out of balance.

The researchers called for more judicious logging, greater fire

prevention, and curbs on roads, power grids and water systems.

But some experts are doubtful about the prospects of controlling

development in the rain forest, where the law of the jungle often

prevails.

``How can you control development in an area where there's no control?

It is the Wild West,'' said Compton Tucker, a NASA biologist.

ITEM #2

Title: Large-scale impoverishment of Amazonian forests by logging

and fire

Source: Nature, Macmillan Publishers Ltd.--Abstract of article

Date: 4/8/99

Byline: DANIEL C. NEPSTAD, ADALBERTO VERISSIMO, ANE ALENCAR, CARLOS

NOBRE, EIRIVELTHON LIMA, PAUL LEFEBVRE, PETER SCHLESINGER,

CHRISTOPHER POTTER, PAULO MOUTINHO, ELSA MENDOZA, MARK

COCHRANE & VANESSA BROOKS

Amazonian deforestation rates are used to determine human effects on

the global carbon cycle and to measure Brazil's progress in curbing

forest impoverishment. But this widely used measure of tropical land

use tells only part of the story. Here we present field surveys of

wood mills and forest burning across Brazilian Amazonia which show

that logging crews severely damage 10,000 to 15,000 km2 yr-1 of forest

that are not included in deforestation mapping programmes. Moreover,

we find that surface fires burn additional large areas of standing

forest, the destruction of which is normally not documented.

Forest impoverishment due to such fires may increase dramatically when

severe droughts provoke forest leaf-shedding and greater flammability;

our regional water-balance model indicates that an estimated 270,000

km2 of forest became vulnerable to fire in the 1998 dry season.

Overall, we find that present estimates of annual deforestation for

Brazilian Amazonia capture less than half of the forest area that is

impoverished each year, and even less during years of severe drought.

Both logging and fire increase forest vulnerability to future burning

and release forest carbon stocks to the atmosphere, potentially

doubling net carbon emissions from regional land-use during severe El

Ni¤o episodes. If this forest impoverishment is to be controlled, then

logging activities need to be restricted or replaced with low-impact

timber harvest techniques, and more effective strategies to prevent

accidental forest fires need to be implemented.

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