Word: nepstad
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...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...
...Each year, despite all strategies to curb the fires, more and more of the Amazon has burned. During and after the 1998 El Ni?o disaster, Nepstad discovered that the damage was far greater than initially estimated. Even where the forest canopy remained unscathed, ground-hugging fires burned thousands of square kilometers of vegetation beneath the treetops. This burning, invisible to satellites, roughly doubled the reported deforestation by land clearing...
...Nepstad and his colleagues learned the ways in which fires during the first year of a drought encourage further fires even if rains return the next season. During the first year of a disruption by El Ni?o, the plant life of the rain forest will suck all the water from the upper 5 m of the soil that supports it. Unless a series of biblical deluges recharges that soil, the water deficit will not be overcome in the next rainy season, so that by the following dry season, soil moisture will be drawn down even further, beyond the reach...
...Multiplied by a factor of thousands, this is what Nepstad fears will happen after the paving of BR-163. Only this time the invasions will take place in the most fire-prone region of the dense tropical forest. The forest could disappear along the road in the blink of an eye. A single El Ni?o?inspired drought could do the trick if the road were paved and settlers had invaded. If this happens, scientists estimate that one burning season could destroy 100,000 sq km of forest, more than twice what was destroyed in all Brazil...
...social inertia. After more than three decades, Brazil?s vaunted Trans-Amazon Highway has yet to be completely paved, and other roads in the Amazon have been all but abandoned. The road that once linked Porto Velho and Manaus becomes impassable a mere two hours outside Porto Velho. Ecologist Nepstad argues that a more limited network of paved roads could give Santar?m all-weather access to the rest of Brazil, while forestalling incursions of unauthorized settlers from the south. The soybean exporters have already paved access to Amazon waterways through Porto Velho...