The
exact rate at which rainforests are presently being destroyed is not known .
U.N.
specialists estimate 60 acres of tropical forest are felled worldwide every
minute. Estimates of deforestation of tropical forest for the 1990s range
from about 55,630 to 150,000 square kilometers each year. Most of the
rainforest destruction has occurred in the last 50 years, with forests being
destroyed at an alarming rate.
Period
Estimated remaining
forest cover
in the Brazilian Amazon (km²)
Annual forest
loss (km²)
Percent of 1970
cover remaining
Total forest loss
since 1970 (km²)
Pre–1970
4,100,000
1977
3,955,870
21,130
96.50%
144,130
1978–1987
3,744,570
21,130
91.30%
355,430
1988
3,723,520
21,050
90.80%
376,480
1989
3,705,750
17,770
90.40%
394,250
1990
3,692,020
13,730
90.00%
407,980
1991
3,680,990
11,030
89.80%
419,010
1992
3,667,204
13,786
89.40%
432,796
1993
3,652,308
14,896
89.10%
447,692
1994
3,637,412
14,896
88.70%
462,588
1995
3,608,353
29,059
88.00%
491,647
1996
3,590,192
18,161
87.60%
509,808
1997
3,576,965
13,227
87.20%
523,035
1998
3,559,582
17,383
86.80%
540,418
1999
3,542,323
17,259
86.40%
557,677
2000
3,524,097
18,226
86.00%
575,903
2001
3,505,932
18,165
85.50%
594,068
2002
3,484,727
21,205
85.00%
615,273
2003
3,459,576
25,151
84.40%
640,424
2004
3,432,147
27,429
83.70%
667,853
2005
3,413,354
18,793
83.30%
686,646
2006
3,400,254
13,100
82.90%
699,746
Source:
Brazilian National Institute for Space Research and FAO
The
reasons for forest destruction vary greatly from continent to continent and from
country to country. The forests are being destroyed at an accelerating pace
tracking the rapid pace of human population growth. There are many causes,
ranging from slow forest degradation to sudden and catastrophic clearcutting,
slash-and-burn, urban development, acid rain, and wildfires. Deforestation can
be the result of the deliberate removal of forest cover for agriculture or urban
development, or it can be a consequence of grazing animals, primarily for
agriculture
2000
The
state of Rondônia in western Brazil is one of the most deforested parts
of the Amazon. In the past three decades, clearing and degradation of the
state’s original 208,000 square kilometers of forest (about 51.4 million
acres, an area slightly smaller than the state of Kansas) has been rapid:
4,200 square kilometers cleared by 1978; 30,000 by 1988; and 53,300 by
1998. By 2003, an estimated 67,764 square kilometers of rainforest—an
area larger than the state of West Virginia—had been cleared.
2003
By the beginning of this decade, the frontier had reached the remote
northwest corner of Rondônia, pictured in this series of images from the
Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra
satellite. Intact forest is deep green, while cleared areas are tan (bare
ground) or light green (crops, pasture, or occasionally, second-growth
forest). Over the span of eight years, roads and clearings pushed
west-northwest from Buritis toward the Jaciparaná River. The deforested
area along the road into Nova Mamoré expanded north-northeast all the way
to the BR-346 highway.
2005
Deforestation follows a fairly predictable pattern in these images. The
first clearings that appear in the forest are in a fishbone pattern,
arrayed along the edges of roads. Over time, the fishbones collapse into a
mixture of forest remnants, cleared areas, and settlements. This pattern
follows one of the most common deforestation trajectories in the Amazon.
Legal and illegal roads penetrate a remote part of the forest, and small
farmers migrate to the area. They claim land along the road and clear some
of it for crops. Within a few years, heavy rains and erosion deplete the
soil, and crop yields fall. Farmers then convert the degraded land to
cattle pasture, and clear more forest for crops. Eventually the small land
holders, having cleared much of their land, sell it or abandon it to large
cattle holders, who consolidate the plots into large areas of pasture.
2008
The balance of nature is being destroyed. Every second of the day land the size of
2 football fields is
lost forever in The Rain Forests of the
World.
Unless
significant measures are taken on a world-wide basis to preserve them, by 2030
there will only be ten percent remaining with another ten percent in a degraded
condition. 80 percent will have been lost and with them the irreversible loss of
hundreds of thousands of species.
This SeaWiFS overpass of Bolivia shows
obvious human habitation in the forms of deforestation and urbanization.Provided
by the SeaWiFS Project, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, and ORBIMAGE
Satellite: OrbView-2 Sensor: SeaWiFS
Rainforests are the
most productive and most complex ecosystems on Earth.Rainforests
are a key element of global weather systems. Destroying them alters the
Hydrological Cycle-causing drought, flooding and soil erosion in areas where
events were previously rare.
The cutting and destruction of the Rainforests also changes the
albedo or reflectivity of the Earth's Surface , which in turn alters wind and
ocean current patterns, and changes rain fall distribution.
If we do not take massive action now it will be too late to stop the domino
effect upon our environment.
This image from Landsat7, acquired on August 1,
2000, shows the new agricultural settlements east of Santa Cruz de la Sierra,
Bolivia in an area of tropical dry forest. Since the mid-1980s, this region has
been rapidly deforested as a result of the resettlement of people from the
Altiplano (the Andean high plains) and a large agricultural development effort,
called the Tierras Baja project. The pie or radial patterned fields (left) are
part of the San Javier resettlement scheme. At the center of each unit is a
small community including a church, bar/cafe, school, and soccer field-the
essentials of life in rural Bolivia. The rectilinear, light-colored areas
(right) are fields of soybeans cultivated for export that are mostly funded by
foreign loans. The dark strips running through these fields are wind breaks.
These are advantageous because the soils in this area are fine and prone to wind
erosion.
-Landsat
image courtesy USGS EROS Data Center and Landsat7 science team. Photographs
courtesy Compton Tucker, NASA GSFC. Satellite: Landsat 7 Sensor: ETM+
The destruction of the World's
Rainforests
displaces and
destroys the cultures of indigenous people who inhabit them. Ways of life that
have existed for eons are totally destroyed, disrupted and up routed. The cultures we are
losing are irreplaceable. In
1500 almost 9 million indigenous people inhabited the Brazilian Rainforest.
Now less than 200,000 remain.
o learn more about
Rainforests visit the following
organizations
Credit: NASA, USGS, Woods Hole
Research Center, Wikipedia, San Diego Zoo
Data
compiled from The British Antarctic Study, NASA, Environment Canada,
UNEP, EPA and other sources as stated and credited Researched
by Charles Welch-Updated dailyThis Website is a project of the The
Ozone Hole Inc. a 501(c)(3) Nonprofit Organization
