Satellite Images Reveal Amazon Forest Shrinking Faster

New methods detect twice as much logging as previously estimated.

1 minute read

October 21, 2005, 7:00 AM PDT

By Chris Steins @planetizen


"Brazil's Amazon rain forest - one of the most biologically productive regions on the planet - is disappearing twice as fast as scientists previously estimated. That is the stark conclusion ecologist Gregory Asner and his colleagues reached after developing a new way to analyze satellite images to track logging there.

...The results boosted the estimates of deforestation during the period from 60 to 123 percent, depending on which of the five logging-intensive Brazilian states they examined. The group verified the results with field surveys. Their results appear in Friday's edition of the journal Science."

Friday, October 21, 2005 in The Christian Science Monitor

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