Word: rains
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Suriname's pristine tropical rain forests are coveted by Asian timber companies. But last week the tiny country (pop. 400,000) announced that it is setting aside a tenth of its land--some 4 million acres--as a nature reserve, forgoing short-term profits for revenues from science and ecotourism. Conservation International, which brokered the deal, hopes it will be a model for other developing countries...
...they've never gone before. "These fires are burning into virgin, humid forests that have evolved without fire," says Nels Johnson of Washington's World Resources Institute. "There is no historical precedent for the fires in the cloud forests of the Lacondon region of Mexico." Fire storms in the rain forests--the very idea defies common sense--have become an unmistakable distress signal from the developing world...
...rain forest is a self-perpetuating system in that water vapor from trees energizes rainstorms. Cut the trees and rainfall decreases, further drying a system that is not adapted to recovering from fire. Experts wonder if this is why denuded southern China has seen a decline in rainfall this century, and why West Africa has lost one of two rainy seasons. Looming over all rain forests is the threat of global warming caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases. Computer simulations suggest that the greenhouse effect will increase the frequency of drought in tropical areas...
Several forces combine to darken the outlook. The industrial world hasn't curbed its appetite for wood or halted the harvesting of rain forests by multinational corporations. In many developing countries, government corruption or mismanagement has allowed indiscriminate logging and clearing of woodland for agriculture. And efforts to slow greenhouse-gas emissions in the U.S., the biggest offender, continue to be stymied by a skeptical Congress. The Senate Appropriations Committee has just slashed $200 million from the Clinton Administration's proposed program to improve energy efficiency, citing doubts about "the existence, extent or effects of global climate change...
...fires pour carbon dioxide into the air, which promotes global warming and makes the forests dryer still. A computer simulation of the effect of climate change in Mexico has predicted that if temperatures rise as feared, rainfall might be reduced 40%--a drop that would doom the remaining rain forests in the state of Chiapas...