Amazon forest loss estimates double
Sci/Tech
By Environment Correspondent Alex Kirby
Wednesday, April 14, 1999 Published at 20:36 GMT 21:36 UK
Logging's damage is less obvious than forest clearance, but no less
real
The true extent of rainforest damage in the Amazon is more than twice as
great as present estimates suggest, researchers say.
Daniel Nepstad: "The degradation will continue"
The team says field surveys of logging and burning show far more
deforestation than satellite monitoring has revealed.
The researchers are based at several Brazilian and US institutions,
including the Woods Hole Research Center, Massachusetts.
Their work is reported in the current issue of Nature magazine.
The researchers interviewed 1,393 wood mill operators, representing more
than half the mills in 75 Amazonian logging centres.
As well, they interviewed 202 landlords, whose properties covered 9,200
sq km.
They found that logging crews annually cause severe damage to between
10,000 and 15,000 sq km of forest that are not included in current
deforestation estimates.
Insidious damage
They also discovered that fires burning on the surface consume large
areas of forest which again are not recorded.
The researchers say the failure so far to register the much greater loss
rate they have discovered is because the loggers reduce tree cover, but
do not eliminate it.
By contrast, ranchers and farmers deforest land in preparation for
pasture and crops by clear-cutting it, and by burning whole areas.
The more the forest burns, the more vulnerable to fire it becomes
And where logging and fires have caused damage, they say, the vegetation
will grow back fast enough to dupe a satellite.
The only reliable way to find out what is happening is by field surveys.
Logging and surface fires seldom kill all the trees. But they help to
make them more vulnerable.
Logging increases the flammability of the forest by reducing leaf canopy
coverage by up to 50%.
This lets the sunlight strike through to the forest floor, where it
dries out the organic debris created by the logging.
Worsened by drought
And fires leave the surviving trees more susceptible to future blazes.
The researchers say the area of surface fires may be much larger than
usual during severe droughts.
An unpublished Brazilian Government report says15,000 sq km of standing
forest may have burned in the northern state of Roraima alone during the
1997-98 El Nino drought.
More deforestation means more carbon emissions
These so far unreported forms of forest loss, the researchers say, imply
a need to look again at climate change calculations.
They write: "Forest impoverishment through logging and surface fire
causes a significant release of carbon to the atmosphere that is not
included in existing estimates of the Amazonian carbon balance."
Carbon dioxide is the principal gas caused by human activity that is
implicated in global warming.
The team says: "Logging and fire can virtually eliminate previously
undisturbed forest in regions with seasonal drought and high
concentrations of wood mills."
One area in eastern Amazonia, they say, was classified as 62% forested
according to conventional deforestation mapping techniques.
Satellites not enough
But they found that only about a tenth of the area classified as forest
actually supported undisturbed forest.
The researchers say: "Satellite-based deforestation monitoring is
an essential tool in studies of human effects on tropical forests,
because it documents the most extreme form of land use, over large
areas, and at low cost.
"But this monitoring needs to be expanded to include forests
affected by logging and surface fire if it is to accurately reflect the
full magnitude of human influences on tropical forests."
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