Word: sq
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...plenty of evidence to support Nepstad?s concern. Almost every year, more and more of the rain forest is going up in smoke. In 1998, in the wake of the weather shifts brought on by El Ni?o?s warming the Pacific waters off South America, some 40,000 sq km of the Brazilian Amazon was scorched. Smoke-related ailments killed 700 people, put more than 10,000 in the hospital, according to ipam, and afflicted tens of thousands of others who did not show up in official statistics. The following year, when Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso tried to become...
...barren holdings to cattle ranchers looking to buy cleared land on the cheap. So the devastation continues to creep forward. All over the Amazon, I saw vast areas of degraded land where before there was a virtually unbroken expanse of trees. In all, the Amazon contains some 550,000 sq km of deforested land, one-third of which has been abandoned...
...drought, human despoiling and fire can transform wet tropical forest into permanent savanna. So argues Bruce Nelson, an ecologist who has worked since 1979 with inpa, the Brazilian institute for the study of the Amazon. Nelson believes pre-Columbian Indians created the Gran Sabana in Venezuela, a 75,000-sq-km area of veld stretching across the southeast corner of the country, by repeated burning of the forest. As evidence, he points out that unlike neighboring natural grasslands, the Gran Sabana lacks fire-tolerant tree species. In other words, forests burned down hundreds of years ago have been permanently eliminated...
...country in a very different landscape, Cree guides lead animal lovers in Polar Bear Provincial Park. Traveling with Free Spirit Air Adventures www.elmhirst.com) Alice Piacentini of Prospect, Ohio, flew with her husband, four children ranging then from six to 14, and her parents-in-law to the 9,100-sq.-mi. park in northern Ontario. While everyone in the family was thrilled by the bears, they were even more affected by Sam Hunter, their Cree guide, and his family www.icebeartours.com) The best part of the trip, Piacentini says, was "the respect for the land and animals that we gained through...
Media accounts have also drawn tens of thousands to Ontario's Algonquin Park (www.algonquinpark.on.ca), 3,000 sq. mi. of wild country--with an unusual attraction: public wolf howls. Provided park naturalists find packs in suitable locations in advance, howls take place on Thursday nights in August. Folks drive hours to attend a howl, which may last less than two minutes. Yet "no one goes away disappointed," says park naturalist Rick Stronks. When this haunting symphony of adult wolves and pups begins, not a peep is heard from human crowds as large...