Brazil: new system for mapping destruction reporting surge in partial cuts

A new system for mapping destruction of Brazil’s Amazon rainforest is
reporting a surge in areas that have been partially cut but not yet
cleared. Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research said the
system shows that an area roughly the size of Belize or the state of
Vermont was partially knocked down this year. The institute tracked
24,932 square kilometers (9,600 square miles) of partially decimated
forest this year, up 67 percent from 14,915 square kilometers (5,750
square miles) in 2007, according to statistics available Friday on its
Web site. That’s also twice the size of zones that were clearcut
during the last 12 months on record. Scientists say the new system for
tracking areas in the process of being destroyed can better alert the
government to locales needing urgent policing. Previously Brazil’s
government concentrated on monitoring areas completely denuded of
trees. “It is much more likely that the clearcut will occur in areas
that have already been degraded than in areas where the forest is
intact,” the director of the space research institute, Gilberto
Camara, told the O Estado de S. Paulo newspaper for its Friday
editions.

The new system uses the same satellite images that Brazil’s
scientists use to track clearcut areas, which have been monitored
since 1988. Brazil slowed deforestation by 60 percent between 2005 and
2007, but officials recently announced that destruction accelerated in
the first half of this year as higher soy and beef prices prompted
farmers to carve more fields and pastures from the rain forest.
Brazilian officials released a plan to slow deforestation earlier this
month — the first time the government has set a concrete goal to
decelerate rainforest destruction. The goal is to reduce deforestation
to 5,000 square kilometers (1,900 square miles) a year by 2017. The
plan would boost federal patrols of forested areas, replant 5.5
million hectares (13.6 million acres) of forest, and finance
sustainable development projects to give locals alternative work in
areas where illegal logging dominates the economy. Deforestation —
both the burning and rotting of Amazon wood — releases an estimated
400 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year,
making Brazil at least the sixth biggest emitter of the gas in the
world. Rain forest burning accounts for 55 percent of Brazilian
emissions that contribute to global warming, officials.
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/12/19/news/LT-Brazil-Amazon-Destruction.php

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