Word: amazon
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...Ni?o provides the tinder, but humans provide the match. Human penetration of the Amazon, rather than lightning or other natural phenomena, sparks most of the huge fires, and that penetration is increasing, along with deforestation and slash-and-burn agriculture. Fire, deforestation and roads are linked in an unholy trinity. In 1998, Brazilian authorities found themselves battling enormous fires in the states of Par? (where 40% of the southeastern forests burned), Roraima and Mato Grosso. Most blazes started near roads as settlers burned accessible forest to clear land for farms. The only reason even bigger stretches of the dense forest...
...Around the world, scientists have found that roads are the single best (but not infallible) predictor of tropical deforestation. In the Brazilian Amazon, roughly 75% of the deforestation that has taken place has occurred within 50 km of a paved road. In the 26 years after the 1965 paving of the slender highway between the Amazon city of Bel?m and Bras?lia, 58% of the forests disappeared in a 100-km swath on either side of the road. The paving of 1,460 km of highway BR-364 between the city of Cuiab? in Mato Grosso and Porto Velho in Rond?nia...
...more profitable way to export soybeans. (After the U.S., Brazil is the world?s largest exporter of the crop.) A Brazilian-American consortium is planning to build an enormous dock-and-loading system in Santar?m, the sleepy port that lies at the junction of the Tapaj?s and Amazon rivers, 700 km from the Atlantic Ocean. Exporting through Santar?m might save agribusinesses $1 per 30-kg bag of soybeans...
...Nepstad argues that the costs to the forest will far offset those gains. More settlers will flood in, and fires will follow the settlers. Moreover, fire begets fire in the Amazon. Dead trees provide the fuel for successive burnings, and cleared areas are often 12?C hotter than the rain-forest floor, which has a leafy canopy that blocks and absorbs as much as 99% of incoming sunlight...
...receives from rainfall. A good portion of that water vapor is carried by air currents that bounce off the Andes and head southward to drop rain on farming regions in the southern states of Mato Grosso and Goi?s, both part of Brazil?s breadbasket. In other words, no Amazon forest in Brazil?s north, no rain in the south. The possibility of calamity threatens far more than isolated trees...