Amazon Rainforest // Current

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25 days ago

Rainforest Action Network: Get Involved!

RAN is building a grassroots challenge to global corporate power from the ground up. There’s work to be done in your... more

julesrs007
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Peruvian Government is Murdering Amazon Protesters!

URGENT: Peru Is Murdering Amazon Protesters! In the past several days the Peruvian government murdered dozens of Indigenous... more

julesrs007
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Drought threatens the Amazon rainforest as a carbon sink

Drought in the Amazon is imperiling the rainforest ecosystem and global climate, reports new research published in Science.

Analyzing the impact of the severe Amazon drought of 2005, a team of 68 researchers across 13 countries and 40 institutions found evidence that rainfall-starved tropical forests lose massive amounts of carbon due to reduced plant growth and dying trees. The 2005 drought — triggered by warming in the tropical North Atlantic rather than el Niño — resulted in a net flux of 5 billion tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere — more than the combined annual emissions of Japan and Europe — relative to normal years when the Amazon is a net sink for 2 billion tons of CO2.

The findings suggest that in the face of warming climate, relying on tropical forests as a massive carbon sink is a perilous proposition, raising questions about the effectiveness of schemes to offset industrial emissions by protecting rainforests without also curbing fossil fuel use. Should droughts worsen on a global scale, forests could become a net source of emissions, exacerbating climate change.

"For years the Amazon forest has been helping to slow down climate change. But relying on this subsidy from nature is extremely dangerous", said lead author Oliver Phillips, referencing newly published research indicating that tropical forests have absorbed as much as a fifth of fossil fuel emissions in recent decades.

"If the earth's carbon sinks slow or go into reverse, as our results show is possible, carbon dioxide levels will rise even faster," Phillips, a professor at the University of Leeds, added. "Deeper cuts in emissions will be required to stabilize our climate."

The researchers estimate that old growth forests in the Amazon store roughly 120 billion tons of carbon in their vegetation and process — through photosynthesis and respiration — 18 billion tons of carbon annually, or more than twice the emissions from fossil fuel use. Given this massive scale of carbon cycling, "relatively small changes in Amazon forest dynamics therefore have the potential to substantially affect the concentration of atmospheric CO2 and thus the rate of climate change itself," they note.

Overall the study found that a 100-millimeter (4 inch) increase in water deficit triggers the loss of 2.7 tons of aboveground forest carbon per hectare. However the impact of drought may be even worse — dry conditions greatly increase the risk of forest fire, including small surface fires that can inflict serious harm in even old-growth rainforest.

Drought also affects the species composition of the forest. Some species, especially fast-growing, light-wooded trees, are particularly vulnerable to reduced rainfall.

"Amazon drought kills selectively and therefore may also alter species composition, pointing to potential consequences of future drought events on the biodiversity in the Amazon region," the authors write.

"Drought threatens biodiversity too," said co-author Abel Monteagudo, a Peruvian botanist with the Missouri Botanical Gardens.

Unlikely other research that has relied primarily on satellite imagery to measure drought stress (including one that suggested dry conditions enhance growth in the Amazon), the study was conducted under RAINFOR, a research network that monitors death rates and growth among more than 100,000 trees in 100 forest plots across the Amazon's 600 million hectares. The granularity of the study allowed scientists to directly measure changes that would not be otherwise readily apparent but may have big impacts.Drought in the Amazon is imperiling the rainforest ecosystem and global climate, reports new research published in Science.... more

JanforGore
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5 responses

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4 months ago

Judge rejects Chevron's motion to delay 27 billion Ecuador environmental trial

The Amazon Defense Coalition reports that oil is still visible to the naked eye in places where Chevron claimed it was remediated.... more

JanforGore
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13 responses

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5 months ago

THE WORLD SOCIAL FORUM RETURNS TO BRAZIL

While the other guys had there annual party in Davos, the World Social Forum (WSF) returned to Brazil during the last week of January 2009. More than 100,000 people descended on the city of Belem at the mouth of the mighty Amazon river to debate proposals and plan strategies for making a new and better world.

here is an excerpt from the post-WSF press release by COICA (amazon basin indigenous peoples organization)

COICA, with our worldview, diversity of languages, history, cultures, spirituality, territory, economy, have existed since before recorded time. We have adopted different forms of organization and identity under the framework of the nation states which have established laws and regulations according to their own interests, not recognizing the ancestral rights of the first inhabitants of the amazon region.
Attempting to arrive at a consensus between 390 ethnic groups, representing a population of 2,779,478 people in the 10,268,471 square kilometer Amazon basin, we gathered in Belem do Para, Brazil from Jan. 27th through Feb. 1st for the World Social Forum. While at the forum we held intense meetings and in-depth debate and analysis about the reality of the indigenous peoples living in the Amazon and those from other biomes, offering our support and leadership in the process of the World Social Forum.
We affirm the rights of Indigenous peoples, considering the principles of the declaration by the U.N. in regards to the rights of indigenous peoples (UNDRIP) and the good faith and follow through on the obligations by the nation states that have adopted said declaration, to be considered different, and to be respected as different, and that we contribute to the richness and diversity of civilizations and cultures that make up humanity.
We condemn all doctrines, policies and practices based in the superiority of a determined people or nationality, and the persons whom perpetuate said doctrines, policies and practices through use of rationality based on national origin and racial, religious, ethnic, or cultural differences which are socially unjust, scientifically false, morally condemnable, judicially invalid and otherwise racist. We affirm that indigenous peoples have the right to self determination over their political condition and must freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.
Therefore, we demand the immediate demarcation and title over our ancestral territory, which has been used as alway by its legitimate inhabitants. We denounce and condemn the violent intimidation through the murders of our leaders for the defense of our territories and rights as indigenous peoples.
We denounce the advance of the agricultural border and agricultural development (agro-industry) responsible for the violation of our rights in reference to discrimination, the plundering of our territories, deforestation, burning of the forest and grasslands, the contamination of soils and rivers, the use of transgenetics and agrochemicals, the expansion of monoculture, bio-piracy, illegal timber traffic, industrial residues and waste, all factors that put at risk our food sovereignty, the lost of ecosystems, and finally the the lost of our cultural values and identity.
Furthermore, these impacts deepen the vulnerability of our sister indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation, living without outside contact or in the early phase of outside contact- we demand, on there behalf, the integral guarantee of there territories by the part of the nation states concerned.
We denounce to the world the genocide of indigenous peoples and the depredation of the amazonian forests by mega-projects of South American Regional Infrastructure Integration Initiative (IIRSA) and PAC, which are operated by the nation states and governments. We demand abolition of these mega-projects.While the other guys had there annual party in Davos, the World Social Forum (WSF) returned to Brazil during the last week of... more

LucienRafagas
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1 response

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6 months ago

Texaco's toxic past in Amazon haunts Chevron as $27 billion judgment looms

As oil executives ring in the new year by counting their record shattering profits, we need to remember what they did to get... more

tbowman131
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4 responses

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10 months ago

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Frog expert answers your questions

Frogs are the telling animal in any eco-systems health.

starr111
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0 responses

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10 months ago

Deforestation escalates in Brazilian Amazon

Satellite imagery released earlier this week provided further evidence that deforestation in Brazil's Amazon region... more

jefftego
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1 response

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11 months ago

Bartering sex for stuff or services

While she was studying in Brazil during college, the one thing Stephanie Gerson longed to do before leaving was spend time in the... more

luckysnorkel
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55 responses

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1 year ago

Duke of Herbs

World-renowned ethnobotanist, Jim Duke, measures herbs against pharmaceuticals and reflects on a lifetime of plant medicine... more

RyanBWylie
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16 responses

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11 months ago

Shaman Healing Songs

Traditional Amazonian healers or curanderos, claim the spirits of the plants communicate with them through lullabies, called... more

RyanBWylie
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2 responses

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11 months ago

Chevron lobbyists fight Ecuador toxic-dumping case

What Chevron does with the it's.. 'human energy'. The largest environmental class action lawsuit has been filed... more

onepeacefullight
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8 responses

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12 months ago

Report: half the Amazon rainforest to be lost by 2030

(NaturalNews) Due to the effects of global warming and deforestation, more than half of the Amazon rainforest may be destroyed or... more

Octoguy
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4 responses

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1 year ago

Brazil unveils new plan to curb Amazon logging

Brazil has unveiled its plan to encourage farmers in the Amazon region to develop sustainable sources of income and turn their... more

stone246
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14 responses

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1 year ago

Bio-fuels are bio-foolish

The Amazon was the chic eco-cause of the 1990s, revered as an incomparable storehouse of biodiversity. It's been overshadowed lately by global warming, but the Amazon rain forest happens also to be an incomparable storehouse of carbon, the very carbon that heats up the planet when it's released into the atmosphere. Brazil now ranks fourth in the world in carbon emissions, and most of its emissions come from deforestation.

This land rush is being accelerated by an unlikely source: biofuels. An explosion in demand for farm-grown fuels has raised global crop prices to record highs, which is spurring a dramatic expansion of Brazilian agriculture, which is invading the Amazon at an increasingly alarming rate.

The U.S. quintupled its production of ethanol--ethyl alcohol, a fuel distilled from plant matter--in the past decade, and Washington has just mandated another fivefold increase in renewable fuels over the next decade. Europe has similarly aggressive biofuel mandates and subsidies, and Brazil's filling stations no longer even offer plain gasoline. Worldwide investment in biofuels rose from $5 billion in 1995 to $38 billion in 2005 and is expected to top $100 billion by 2010, thanks to investors like Richard Branson and George Soros, GE and BP, Ford and Shell, Cargill and the Carlyle Group.

But several new studies show the biofuel boom is doing exactly the opposite of what its proponents intended: it's dramatically accelerating global warming, imperiling the planet in the name of saving it. Corn ethanol, always environmentally suspect, turns out to be environmentally disastrous. Even cellulosic ethanol made from switchgrass, which has been promoted by eco-activists and eco-investors as well as by President Bush as the fuel of the future, looks less green than oil-derived gasoline.

Meanwhile, by diverting grain and oilseed crops from dinner plates to fuel tanks, biofuels are jacking up world food prices and endangering the hungry. The grain it takes to fill an SUV tank with ethanol could feed a person for a year. Harvests are being plucked to fuel our cars instead of ourselves. The U.N.'s World Food Program says it needs $500 million in additional funding and supplies, calling the rising costs for food nothing less than a global emergency.

Biofuels do slightly reduce dependence on imported oil, and the ethanol boom has created rural jobs while enriching some farmers and agribusinesses. But the basic problem with most biofuels is amazingly simple, given that researchers have ignored it until now: using land to grow fuel leads to the destruction of forests, wetlands and grasslands that store enormous amounts of carbon.

Deforestation accounts for 20% of all current carbon emissions. So unless the world can eliminate emissions from all other sources--cars, power plants, factories, even flatulent cows--it needs to reduce deforestation or risk an environmental catastrophe. That means limiting the expansion of agriculture, a daunting task as the world's population keeps expanding. And saving forests is probably an impossibility so long as vast expanses of cropland are used to grow modest amounts of fuel. The biofuels boom, in short, is one that could haunt the planet for generations--and it's only getting started.

The Amazon was the chic eco-cause of the 1990s, revered as an incomparable storehouse of biodiversity. It's been overshadowed... more