BRAZIL AND THE Amazon river;
deforestation
The Amazon river accounts for one-fifth of the world fresh water drained into oceans. The Amazon is 4,000 miles/6,868 km long, the equivalent to the distance that separates New York from Berlin, and almost two times the length of the Mississippi river and five times longer than the river Rhine.
The Amazon basin occupies 7 million square kilometres: 58.5% of the area of Brazil, more than the physical space of Western Europe, and the equivalent to two thirds of the United States. The Amazon rain forest is home of millions of species, most of them unknown of the science.
See, for information about Amazon fauna:
Amazonian fauna: parrots and...
The Amazon has a key importance on climate patterns. A significantly destruction of the Amazon rainforest, can be a direct threat to our own human survival, and will induce strong alterations on world pattern climates.
Regularly, newspapers from Manaus report the appearance of Indian women, coming from the forest. They appear at night, at nearby lakes, and laugh and swim at those some lakes, longing for men’s desire. They want love slaves...
These are, of course, echoes of the first report of women warriors, inhabiting the Amazon basin: something that goes back to the beginnings of Amazonian exploration, to 1541, to the voyage of the Spanish conquistador Francisco de Orellana in Amazon River, and to the chronicle of that same voyage, done by a Franciscan friar, called Gaspar Carvajal. It was Carvajal who first wrote about groups of splendid women warriors, living in the interior of the forest, apart from men, whom he named “Amazons”.
See, for books about the Amazon:
Books about the Amazon rain forest
The Amazon has the largest water lily in the world: the Victoria Amazonica. This tropical plant with leaves that can attain a diameter of 1.8 m (6 ft) may be easily observed on Manaus region.
Though emblematic and a touristic attraction, the giant lily, or other plants of major economic importance as the mahogany, the rubber tree, or the passion fruit tree, are just an insignificant part of a larger flora, involving many thousands of kinds of plants, many of them largely unknown or unexplored as food source or in its medicinal uses.
The Amazon flora: the huge biodiversity
The two million square miles (more than 5 million square kilometres) of Amazon rainforest contains an unknown number of flora species. Near the river margins, the vegetation is relatively sparse and poor in its variety, due to seasonal floods, but in the deepest forest the variety is amazing.
And we must keep them. They are not only part of our habitable environment. They are also source of products that help sustain our lives – as food as or as font of medicinal products. «More than 40% of all prescriptions dispensed by pharmacies in the U.S. are substances originally extracted from plants, animals, fungi and micro-organisms. Aspirin, for example, the most widely used medicine in the world, was derived from salicylic acid, which in turn was discovered in a species of meadowsweet. (…) Medical researchers are nevertheless locked in an arms race with the rapidly evolving pathogens that is certain to grow more serious. They are obliged to turn to a broader array of wild species to discover the new weapons of the 21st century medicine.
Each species is a masterpiece of evolution, offering a vast source of useful scientific knowledge because it is so thoroughly adapted to the environment in which it lives. Species alive today are thousands to millions of years old. Their genes, having been tested by adversity over so many generations, engineer a staggeringly complex array of biochemical devices to aid the survival and reproduction of the organisms carrying them.
E.O. Wilson, Only Humans Can Halt the Worst Wave of Extinction Since the Dinosaurs Died
Deforestation in the Amazon is very intense, as in other tropical rain forests. «If the current rate of deforestation continues, the world's rain forests will vanish within 100 years - causing unknown effects on global climate and eliminating the majority of plant and animal species on the planet», says the unsuspected Nasa, in its “Earth Observation”
We will lose many of the Amazon richness if the present rhythm of forest destruction continues. At this precise moment there are fires, somewhere in Amazon, burning the jungle, many acres of it. Amazon fires never stop, even in the rainy season. The photo above (of Pacific Northwest Research Station USDA Forest) is very revealing.
Those fires are a direct contribution to the increasing level of CO2 in the atmosphere. They contribute to the around 6 billon metric tons of carbon men release into the atmosphere, every year. They are part of the greenhouse effect.
We can’t forget global warming dangers. «If it were only a few degrees, that would be serious, but we could adapt to it. But the danger is the warming process might be unstable and run away. We could end up like Venus, covered in clouds and with the surface temperature of 400 degrees. It could be too late if we wait until the bad effects of warming become obvious. We need action now to reduce emission of carbon dioxide». Those are words of the Physics Nobel Prize Stephen Hawking, on Larry King Live Dec. 25, 1999. Words corroborated by most of the climatologists: «Climate is an unpredictable wild beast, and we are poking at it with sticks» (W. Broecker).
See, for books and DVD about the Amazon rain forest, deforestation, global warming and related issues:
Books and DVDs about the Amazon rain forest
Why the destruction of rainforest, at such alarming rates?
The answer isn’t simple. Sting (Gordon), the English rock singer and songwriter, said once, to the International Herald Tribune: «If I were a Brazilian without land or money or the means to feed my children, I would be burning the rainforest too». The poverty is powerful answer, indeed.
Nasa, in its Earth Observation, explains that the causes of deforestation are very complex:
«A competitive global economy drives the need for money in economically challenged tropical countries. At the national level, governments sell logging concessions to raise money for projects, to pay international debt, or to develop industry. (…)
Most of the clearing is done for agricultural purposes-grazing cattle, planting crops. Poor farmers chop down a small area (typically a few acres) and burn the tree trunks. Intensive, or modern, agriculture occurs on a much larger scale, sometimes deforesting several square miles at a time. Large cattle pastures often replace rain forest to grow beef for the world market.
Commercial logging is another common form of deforestation, cutting trees for sale as timber or pulp. Logging can occur selectively-where only the economically valuable species are cut-or by clearcutting, where all the trees are cut. Commercial logging uses heavy machinery, such as bulldozers, road graders, and log skidders, to remove cut trees and build roads, which is just as damaging to a forest overall as the chainsaws are to the individual trees.
Deforestation by a peasant farmer is often done to raise crops for self-subsistence, and is driven by the basic human need for food. Most tropical countries are very poor by U.S. standards, and farming is a basic way of life for a large part of the population. In Brazil, for example, the average annual earnings per person is U.S. $5400, compared to $26,980 per person in the United States (World Bank, 1998). In Bolivia, which holds part of the Amazon rain forest, the average earnings per person is $800. Farmers in these countries do not have the money to buy necessities and must raise crops for food and to sell.
There are other reasons for deforestation, such as to construct towns or dams which flood large areas. Yet, these latter cases constitute only a very small part of the total deforestation.
Deforestation increases the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other trace gases in the atmosphere. The plants and soil of tropical forests hold 460-575 billion metric tons of carbon worldwide with each acre of tropical forest storing about 180 metric tons of carbon. When a forest is cut and burned to establish cropland and pastures, the carbon that was stored in the tree trunks (wood is about 50% carbon) joins with oxygen and is released into the atmosphere as CO2»
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