Word: soiled
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...Nino, the periodic warming of Pacific waters that plays havoc with the world's weather. El Nino helped cause the 1998 Amazon dry spell, and ecologist Nepstad has studied the vicious circle of drought and fire. The first year of drying and burning sucks vital moisture from the soil and leaves the forest littered with tinder. Sheltering leaves that ordinarily prevent the forest floor from baking in the sun are thinned out. The rainy season may provide a brief respite, but during the next dry season, the remaining trees quickly exhaust soil moisture and become more susceptible to fire. When...
...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...
...rain forest is not good agricultural land, to put it mildly: the very nature of the ecosystem is to recycle organic matter without enriching the underlying soil. Once cleared, the acidic dirt of the forest floor is exhausted after a few harvests. That in turn causes peasant farmers to keep moving and sell their barren holdings to cattle ranchers looking to buy cleared land on the cheap. So the devastation continues to creep forward. All over the Amazon, I saw vast areas of degraded land where before there was a virtually unbroken expanse of trees. In all, the Amazon contains...
...which fires during the first year of a drought encourage further fires even if rains return the next season. During the first year of a disruption by El Ni?o, the plant life of the rain forest will suck all the water from the upper 5 m of the soil that supports it. Unless a series of biblical deluges recharges that soil, the water deficit will not be overcome in the next rainy season, so that by the following dry season, soil moisture will be drawn down even further, beyond the reach of the rain-forest root network...
...hostile relations dating back to the Nixon administration, the visit opened the door for what many hope will be a new epoch of closer, and more hospitable, Indo-American affairs. However, while the visit showed a willingness of behalf of Americans to welcome the Indian government onto its soil, it did not demonstrate a willingness to genuinely refocus the lens through which the country is viewed. Politicians and the press alike evaluated the success of the visit based entirely on its potential effects with regard to nuclear non-proliferation. The wealth of other areas in which Indian and American interests...