"Stealth logging" doubles amount of rain forest disturbance in the Amazon

[JohnWxy]

http://news.mongabay.com/2005/1101-logging_amazon.html


Research released earlier this month in Science found that Brazil's Amazon rain forest is being degraded twice as fast as deforestation figures suggest. Selective logging, where only one or two valuable tree species are harvested from an area, is driving the forest degradation. The findings have important implications for "sustainable harvesting" schemes that have been promoted as ecologically-sound alternatives to traditional harvesting techniques.


The study, conducted by scientists from the Carnegie Institution at Stanford University, looked at data from three NASA satellites -- Landsat 7, Terra and Earth Observing 1 -- for five Brazilian states between 1999 and 2002 and determined that conventional analysis of satellite data detects only about half the damage caused by timber harvesting by missing degradation that occurs beneath the rainforest's protective canopy. After developing a new method for analyzing the data, the researchers found that selective logging is highly damaging, creating an additional 60 to 123 percent more damage than deforestation alone while resulting in 25 percent more greenhouse gas emissions than previously believed. Further, selective logging dries out the forest interior increasing the risk of forest fires which spread from nearby agricultural fields. Selective logging has also been correlated to road construction which typically triggers additional deforestation as well as wildlife hunting by timber workers.