Climate benefits of Amazon secondary forests—recent advances and research needs
A quarter of the deforested Amazon has regrown as secondary tropical forest and yet the climatic importance of these complex regenerating landscapes is only beginning to be recognised. Advances in satellite remote-sensing have transformed our ability to detect and...
Arguing Tropical Forest Conservation: People versus Parks
We all agree that nature reserves with minimal human influence are an important component of any conservation strategy in any country. Rather, the point of controversy is how best to achieve a much broader, more comprehensive conservation of nature in a region such...
Rethinking Tropical Forest Conservation: Perils in Parks
According to some conservationists, large, pristine, uninhabited parks are the defining criterion of success in conserving tropical forests. They argue that human residents in tropical forests inevitably deplete populations of large animals through hunting, which...
The commercial fisheries of the lower Amazon: an economic analysis
This study characterizes the fishermen and the commercial fishing fleet of the lower Amazon, based on data collected from 5446 boats operating out of the city of Santarém in 1997. An economic analysis of the activities of these boats was based on 50 interviews with...
Road paving, fire regime feedbacks, and the future of Amazon forests
Fire poses the greatest threat to the forests of Amazônia. The magnitude of this threat is amplified by three positive feedback loops that drive the expansion of forest fire in the region: (1) Fire promotes drought, and therefore more fire, by releasing smoke into...
O manejo comunitário de lagos na Amazônia
Paralelo ao movimento dos seringueiros para proteger as florestas e seu modo de vida, comunidades ribeirinhas da várzea do Rio Amazonas têm se organizado para proteger seus lagos da pressão da pesca comercial. No processo, as comunidades estão desenvolvendo uma...
The Effect of Logging on the Ground-Foraging Ant Community in Eastern Amazonia
In order to determine the suitability of ants as indicator organisms for habitat disruption in tropical forests, we studied the effects of both high and low impact logging on ant communities in northeastern Pará State, in the Brazilian Amazon. We collected ants...