Word: forests
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...There is plenty of evidence to support Nepstad?s concern. Almost every year, more and more of the rain forest is going up in smoke. In 1998, in the wake of the weather shifts brought on by El Ni?o?s warming the Pacific waters off South America, some 40,000 sq km of the Brazilian Amazon was scorched. Smoke-related ailments killed 700 people, put more than 10,000 in the hospital, according to ipam, and afflicted tens of thousands of others who did not show up in official statistics. The following year, when Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso tried...
...soil at the bottom of the Tapaj?s pit is one clue to the nature of this potential catastrophe. Rain-forest trees suck moisture from as deep as 18 m beneath the fragile surface of the land. During periodic droughts, such as occurred during 1998?s El Ni?o, vegetation can rapidly deplete this groundwater, desiccating trees and turning them into potential torches...
...phenomena, sparks most of the huge fires, and that penetration is increasing, along with deforestation and slash-and-burn agriculture. Fire, deforestation and roads are linked in an unholy trinity. In 1998, Brazilian authorities found themselves battling enormous fires in the states of Par? (where 40% of the southeastern forests burned), Roraima and Mato Grosso. Most blazes started near roads as settlers burned accessible forest to clear land for farms. The only reason even bigger stretches of the dense forest around Tapaj?s did not go up in flames is that no paved roads penetrate the most vulnerable areas. But they...
...predictor of tropical deforestation. In the Brazilian Amazon, roughly 75% of the deforestation that has taken place has occurred within 50 km of a paved road. In the 26 years after the 1965 paving of the slender highway between the Amazon city of Bel?m and Bras?lia, 58% of the forests disappeared in a 100-km swath on either side of the road. The paving of 1,460 km of highway BR-364 between the city of Cuiab? in Mato Grosso and Porto Velho in Rond?nia caused the disappearance of a third of the forest bordering the highway in just...
...consulting the federal Ministry of Environment, have approved paving the last dirt stretch of BR-163, which runs 1,741 km north and east from Campo Grande in Mato Grosso do Sul to the city of Santar?m in Par?. The 700-km unpaved section runs directly past Tapaj?s National Forest and on through millions of hectares of the most vulnerable parts of the rain forest. Says Nepstad: ?Brazilian scientists call this area the ?corridor of drought,? and it becomes kindling when El Ni?o roars through...