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| Voice of the Environment's mission is to educate the public regarding the transfer of public trust assets into private, mostly corporate, hands. | ||
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Ukiah office: 1330 Boonville Rd Ukiah, CA 95482 707-467-0329 |
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Napa office: 391 Crystal Springs Rd St. Helena, CA 94574 707-963-8264 |
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| For two decades, Voice of the Environment has stood up for the people and our communities against the avarice of corporations and the misguided policies of the corporate-dominated state. |
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Print This Article Friday, October 21st, 2005 Logging damage in Amazon underestimated, satellites show Canadian Broadcasting Corporation News The area of land cleared of trees in the Amazon is twice the estimate, according to a new study of the environmental damage from previously undetected logging. Satellites record clear cuts, where all the trees on a swath of land are removed to make room for farming or grazing. "Selective logging," or the loss of individual trees from a forest, wasn't detected as deforestation because satellites were unable to penetrate the upper forest canopy. Using new high-resolution satellite imaging techniques, researchers at the Carnegie Institution of Washington have detected openings in the forest canopy down to one tree. Once selective logging is taken into account, the deforested area is estimated to be 60 per cent to 128 per cent larger than the official records for 1999 and 2002. The results "proved that traditional analytical methods missed about 50 per cent of the canopy damage caused by timber harvesting operations," the team wrote in Friday's issue of the journal Science. Previous research has shown the environmental damage of logging, such as light drying out the forest floor, increasing its susceptibility to burning. The study's lead author, Gregory Asner of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology, said other problems of selective logging include: The use of tractors that rip up the soil. Declines in animals from insects to jaguars. An extra 25 per cent more greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere from decomposition of litter, on top of the estimated 400 tons of carbon that enter the atmosphere from traditional clear cuts. "Logged forests are areas of extraordinary damage," Asner said in a statement. "A tree crown can be 25 metres. When you knock down a tree it causes a lot of damage in the understorey. It's a debris field down there." The researchers plan to provide the results to the Brazilian government to help them fight illegal logging. SOURCE Print This Article |
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Voice of the Environment is a 501 (c-3) not-for-profit Montana-based corporation formed in 1991.
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