Rainforest Gets Greener During a Drought

During the drought in the Amazon Rainforest in 2005, many areas actually got greener. Researcher Scott Saleska, of the University of Arizona, explained

"And what we saw was that there was more photosynthesis going on, more capacity to take up carbon dioxide than in an average year"

While this drought was not prolonged, there is no evidence that such results would continue if there were a prolonged drought. People believed that that stressed trees in drought conditions would try to conserve their water by decreasing loss through leaves (transpiration). This in turn would lead to a decrease photosynthesis.
People then believed that the drought be made worse since there was an interuptionby the supply of water into the atmosphere.

It appears that the trees roots were able to obtain water deep underground, much further than the models predicted they could. However more frequent droughts or climate changes could deplete the deep-water stores, thus thwarting the trees ability to survive a drought.

Tags: drought, amazon rain forest, photosynthesis

Free Trade With Peru May Endanger the Amazon Rainforest

The Bush administration is pushing for a free trade agreement with Peru. This may have drastic consequences for the Amazon Rainforest. This may enable multi-national companies to aggresively take the natural assets from the rainforest at an accelerated pace.

Greenwatch Today Reports:

But because the basin is also rich in timber, oil and other valuable resources, powerful multinational corporations are extracting these commodities at an increasingly destructive pace. A key example is mahogany, an endangered species central to the rainforest ecosystem. Rainforest mahogany is currently being imported into the U.S. in clear violation of international agreements.

The administration's proposed Peru Free Trade Agreement fails to halt this illegal trade. Further, as with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Peru deal gives industries such as logging, oil and gas the right to challenge environmental and public health laws by alleging that such protections undermine their ability to make a profit.

Such investment rules accord rights to foreign companies that are considerably broader than what the Supreme Court has mandated in the U.S. And, corporations have wasted no time in capitalizing on this opening: more than 40 lawsuits have already been brought to NAFTA's tribunals, which have repeatedly ruled in favor of the companies.

For more information see http://www.bushgreenwatch.org/mt_archives/000319.php

It would truly be a travesty if the short term gain for corporations destroyed one of the most biologically diverse areas in the world.

Tags: amazon rainforest, rainforest, rainforest destruction, peru, free trade, environment

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Amazon Deforestation Rate Slowing

While the Amazon Rainforest is still being destroyed at an alarming rate, Brazil's environmental minister said the rate is declining. Reports show that 6,450 square miles were destroyed this year. This is a decrease of 11 percent from last year. To put this in perspective this is the size of Hawaii.

This shows it wasn't just a cyclical reduction," Environment Minister Marina Silva told a news conference.

The official deforestation report, based on a more detailed satellite reading, will be ready by year's end.

Brazil's chaotic legal system and its large informal economy have not helped the fight against deforestation. Illegal loggers often use fake permits and land titles to harvest trees and then sell the cleared land to farmers or ranchers.

Silva, whose parents were rubber-tappers in the rainforest state of Acre, pledged to fight illegal logging when she became environment minister in 2003.

But deforestation surged during her first year in office as local demand for timber and global demand for soy and beef tempted people deeper into the rainforest.

Nearly 10,620 square miles -- an area about the size of Massachusetts and Albania -- were cleared from August 2003 to July 2004.

Corruption inside Brazil's park service IBAMA has been part of the problem. Some 100 IBAMA employees have been arrested since mid-2003 in raids that have uncovered more than a dozen illegal logging rings.

The latest bust was announced on Tuesday. Police dismantled a group using front companies to harvest timber from protected areas in the western states of Rondonia and Mato Grosso. Seven IBAMA employees were involved.

Environmental groups in Brazil largely applaud Silva's efforts, although some say they would like to see more attention given to replanting already deforested land.

To date, nearly 270,290 square miles of Amazon rainforest have been cleared, said Joao Paulo Capobianco, the Ministry's secretary of biodiversity. That represents about 17.5 percent of the rainforest, or an area equal to Texas in size and somewhat bigger than Turkey.

For more information see http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060906/sc_nm/environment_brazil_amazon_dc_1

Perhaps the rate is slowing, but is it slowing enough?

Tags: amazon rainforest, deforestation, brazil rainforest, amazon rain forest, brazil

What is the fate of logged forests in the Brazilian Amazon

The The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Online has release a study of what happens to a forest when it is logged.

The long-term viability of a forest industry in the Amazon region of Brazil depends on the maintenance of adequate timber volume and growth in healthy forests. Using extensive high-resolution satellite analyses, we studied the forest damage caused by recent logging operations and the likelihood that logged forests would be cleared within 4 years after timber harvest. Across 2,030,637 km2 of the Brazilian Amazon from 1999 to 2004, at least 76% of all harvest practices resulted in high levels of canopy damage sufficient to leave forests susceptible to drought and fire. We found that 16 ± 1% of selectively logged areas were deforested within 1 year of logging, with a subsequent annual deforestation rate of 5.4% for 4 years after timber harvests. Nearly all logging occurred within 25 km of main roads, and within that area, the probability of deforestation for a logged forest was up to four times greater than for unlogged forests. In combination, our results show that logging in the Brazilian Amazon is dominated by highly damaging operations, often followed rapidly by deforestation decades before forests can recover sufficiently to produce timber for a second harvest. Under the management regimes in effect at the time of our study in the Brazilian Amazon, selective logging would not be sustained.

It should come as no surprise that the outcome is dire.

For more information visit http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/short/103/34/12947

Tags: amazon, amazon deforestation, deforestation, brazil, brazil rainforest

Amazon Deforestation is Increasing Caribbean Hurricanes

Scientists are predicting dire consequences if the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest is not stopped soon. Lelei LeLaulu, president of Counterpart International, has said that cutting the forests will result in a disruption of the warm air flow in the atmosphere. This will in turn lead to an increase in the hurricanes in the Caribbean as well as the Gulf of Mexico.

LeLaulu said the description of the Amazon as "the lungs of the planet" may not be totally accurate as the region re-absorbs some 80-percent of the oxygen it generates.

"Climate scientists, however, have compiled studies which conclude the vast Amazonia is more the "heart of the planet" for its role in pumping moisture and rain to South America and beyond," asserts LeLaulu.

"Basically, the scientists are telling us forest destruction of the Amazon leads to a failure of forest transpiration, the forest pumps, leaving heat in the southern north Atlantic which in turn gives birth to more extreme hurricanes in the Caribbean," he cautioned. It also means the bread baskets of southern Brazil and Argentina could be turned to desert without the rain generated by the Amazon, he added.

Quoting from submissions made by top Brazilian scientists and their colleagues from the leading European and American academies of science to a high-level meeting on the Amazon, LeLaulu asserted, "we are now able to explain why the sea temperature of the southern north Atlantic has been rising, giving birth to more extreme hurricanes which ravage the Caribbean and North America."

Tom Spencer, vice chairman of the Institute for Environmental Security in the Hague, said this is the missing link and holds out the possibility of a new deal in the international climate negotiations such as the Kyoto Protocol. "The scientists are telling us we are running out of time as the forests struggle to survive. We in the political sphere have to approach international meetings such as the upcoming United Nations climate conference in Nairobi this November with a new sense of urgency," said Spencer former head of the British Conservative Party at the European Parliament.

For more information:http://www.caribbeannetnews.com/cgi-script/csArticles/articles/000024/002420.htm

While it seems there is definately an increase in the severity and quanity of Caribbean Hurricanes the last few years, others argue it is just a natural weather cycle. They state we have entered a period of high activity for the next few years.

Tags: Amazon rainforest, deforestation, hurricanes, caribbean hurricanes, gulf of mexico

Brazil Protects Three New Areas in the Amazon Rainforest

Yesterday, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva decreed three new protected areas in the Amazon. This makes 1.84 million hectares (4.55 million acres) of pristine rainforest off-limits for development.

Silva signed the decrees creating the 880,000 hectare (2.2 million acre) Campos Amazonicos National Park and two extractive reserves at a ceremony in Brasil. Extractive reserves are areas where local communities can exploit the rainforest in a sustainable manner, harvesting its fruits, nuts and rubber without logging.

The national park straddles Amazonas and Rondonia states. The Rio Unini and Arapixi reserves are both in Amazonas.

Since taking office in 2002 Silva has created 57 protected areas in the Amazon preserving some 19.3 million hectares (47.6 million acres) of rainforest, the environment ministry said.

But in truth, many of these protected areas exist only on paper.

Even when the parks have some degree of infrastructure, they rarely have enough forest rangers to patrol vast expanses. According to the environmental group Vitoria Amazonica, Brazil has one forest ranger for every 650 square miles at its 278 federal preserves.

That number falls sharply in the Amazon, which many rangers shun because of the isolation and threats from loggers.

The United States parks department has some 32,000 full-time employees compared with around 1,100 full-time staff in Brazil's parks.

The Brazilian Amazon sprawls over 1.6 million square miles (4.2 million square kilometers), the area of western Europe. Experts say as much as 20 percent of the forest has been destroyed by development, logging and farming. Last year the forest lost a near-record 10,000 square miles (25,900 square kilometers).

While the new laws seem to add protection, we'll see how well they are enforced.

Tags: amazon rainforest, logging, brazil, rainforest

An Amazon Stonehenge found in Brazil

Archaeologists have discovered a pre-colonial astrological observatory possibly 2,000 years old in the Amazon basin near French Guiana, a report has said.

"Only a society with a complex culture could have built such a monument," archaeologist Mariana Petry Cabral, of the Amapa Institute of Scientific and Technological Research (IEPA), told O Globo newspaper.

The observatory was built of 127 blocks of granite each three metres high and regularly placed in circles in an open field, she said.

Ms Cabral said the site resembles a temple which could have been used as an observatory, because the blocks are positioned to mark the winter solstice.

In December, the path of the sun allows rays to pass through a hole in one of the blocks, possibly to calculate agricultural activity and religious rituals.

Its exact age has been difficult to determine, but based on ceramic fragments found nearby, archaeologists estimate it between 500 and 2,000 years old.

The discovery is in Calcoene, 390 kilometres from Macapa, the capital of Amapa state, near Brazil's border with French Guyana.

Archaeologists said the find holds mysteries similar to Stonehenge, in Salisbury, England, another monument of huge stones, whose purpose is also unclear.

Tags: amazon rainforest, amazon river, stonehenge, brazil