The Large‐Scale Biosphere‐Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia: Analyzing Regional Land Use Change Effects

1 de janeiro de 2004

jan 1, 2004

Michael Keller, Maria Assunção Silva‐Dias, Daniel C. Nepstad, Meinrat O. Silva‐Andreae

The Brazilian Amazon currently releases about 0.2 Pg-C to the atmosphere each year as a result of net deforestation. Logging and forest fire activity are poorly quantified but certainly increase this amount by more than 10%. Fires associated with land management activities generate smoke that leads to heating of the lower atmosphere, decreases in overall cloudiness, increases in cloud lifetimes, and the suppression of rainfall. There are considerable uncertainties associated with our understanding of smoke effects. Present development trends point to agricultural intensification in the Brazilian Amazon. This intensification and the associated generation of wealth present an opportunity to enhance governance on the frontier and to minimize the damaging effects of fires.

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Large-scale impoverishment of Amazonian forests by logging and fire

Large-scale impoverishment of Amazonian forests by logging and fire

Amazonian deforestation rates are used to determine human effects on the global carbon cycle and to measure Brazil's progress in curbing forest impoverishment. But this widely used measure of tropical land use tells only part of the story. Here we present field surveys of wood mills and forest burning across Brazilian Amazonia which show that logging crews severely damage 10,000 to 15,000 km2 yr−1 of forest that are not included in deforestation mapping programmes.