A new NASA satellite map reveals the surge in deforestation in the Amazon. The Brazilian part of the rainforest is now a wilderness twice the size of Texas.
For the first time, scientists have measured the global extent of tropical deforestation, as a new NASA satellite mapped out the sharp increase in the rate of forest clearing.
“This is the first time we have a systematic way to see the scale of tropical deforestation and what is going on in different parts of the world,” said Tanya Harrison, a scientist in the University of California, Berkeley and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “This is the largest increase in tropical deforestation we have ever seen and it has a huge impact on biodiversity, climate and human well-being.”
Harrison worked with researchers from the Brazil-based nonprofit Conservation International to produce the first-ever map of tropical forest destruction around the globe. It covers Brazil, the Amazon and Indonesia, which together comprise more than half of all tropical forests.
“For most people, their first exposure to the Amazon is this beautiful-looking forest that you see on Disney movies,” Harrison said. “But the reality is this rainforest is being clear cut at an increasing rate. Just in Brazil, deforestation doubled between 2004 and 2008.”
Harrison said tropical deforestation now covers about 24 percent of the planet's forests, compared to 7 percent in 1990. The most recent data, from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, suggests that the Amazon accounts for about 60 percent of the world's tropical deforestation.
Harrison said the most recent data also suggests that global deforestation is rising at a similar rate to the rate of recent global economic expansion.
The new map and analysis, underscores the fact that as more people become wealthy and a growing global middle class expands, they demand a large variety of fresh foods and travel to exotic locations. By cutting down tropical forests and draining swampland, the people running the Amazon are making money for the most part. The world is a very short distance away – a two-hour flight – and it is “expensive” to import food or power your home in many parts of the world, Harrison said.
“If they can get those products out of the Amazon, they do,” she said.
The analysis was made possible by the recently launched Aqua satellite, which uses heat-sensitive cameras to detect changes in forest cover. By looking at daily changes over the course of a year, the researchers were able to track what Harrison said was a 60 percent increase in forest destruction in Brazil.
The University of California, Berkeley and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory helped prepare the new map.
Scientists have been tracking tropical deforestation for years using images from airplanes and the like, but satellite imagery was never widely used. The new map now allows them to more precisely see the extent of the changes and show how deforestation patterns are changing as a result of changing economic and climate conditions, said Kate Thomas of the Seattle-based Conservation International.
“What we are trying to do is show people how these dramatic changes are affecting people and local communities,” she said. “It's really important to understand how this is all connected and how forest loss affects everything else.”
