Study Projects 80% Loss Of Forest Cover In Southern Amazon "Arc Of Deforestation" By 2016

[hatrack]

Forest cover in the "Arc of Deforestation" of southern Amazonia will decline to around 20 percent 2016 due to continued logging and conversion of forests for cattle pasture and soy farms, report researchers writing in the journal Environmental Conservation. The results are independent of impacts resulting from climate change, which some researchers say could dry the Southern Amazon and turn it into a tinderbox.

Analyzing high resolution satellite data from 1984 through 2004 for the Alta Floresta region in northern Mato Grosso, Fernanda Michalski, Carlos Peres and Iain Lake of the University of East Anglia found that forest cover declined from from 91.1 percent to 41.7 percent between 1984 and 2004. They note that while the deforestation rate has slowed to around 2 percent per year since peaking at more than 8 percent annually in late 1980s to mid-1990s, renewed expansion of road networks will enable loggers to increasingly exploit remaining forests, leading to degradation and likely eventual conversion for agricultural use. Overall Michalski and colleagues forecast that forest cover in Alta Floresta will fall to 21 percent by 2016, a decline of 77 percent since 1984.

EDIT


Series of land-use maps representing the evolution of the landscape structure in the Alta Floresta region at four-year intervals throughout through study period. Land-cover classes are represented by water (W), forest (F) and non-forest (NF). Courtesy of Michalski et al (2008)

The authors' projections are based on a model that incorporates regional deforestation rates, changes in forest structure, and socioeconomic drivers of deforestation in the study area over the 20-year period. The results "indicate a critical threshold at 51% of forest cover in which landscape structure and connectivity changes abruptly." Now that forest cover has dipped below this level the authors believe cover will trend downwards. To reserve course and maintain forest cover, Michalski and colleagues suggest that "environmental law enforcement, land-use planning and education programs" need to be effectively implemented.

"We suggest that the current proportion of forest cover should be maintained by ensuring the continuation of readily available data from satellite monitoring as well as in situ law enforcement of Brazilian forest legislation, especially during the dry season when most of the deforestation takes place," they write.

EDIT

http://news.mongabay.com/2008/0903-amazon_deforestation.html