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Road in the rainforest of Madagascar. (Photo by R. Butler)
FUELWOOD/BUILDING MATERIAL
FAO estimates that 40 percent of the world (2.6 billion people) rely on fuelwood or charcoal as their primary source of energy for cooking and heating. Fuelwood consumption has increased 250 percent since 1960 (the world's population only increased by 90 percent since 1960).
The collection of fuelwood and building material from the rainforest remains an important cause of deforestation by settlers. For example, Honduras relies on the burning of fuelwood for 65 percent of the county's energy, while in some African nations the percentage is even higher. In the late 1990s the refugee camps, full of some 750,000 refugees, in eastern Zaire relied heavily on the collection of fuelwood from Virunga National Park, the mountain gorilla reserve. In just a few months over 20,000 acres of park were cleared for fuelwood and building material.
Roads in the Brazilian Amazon. Courtesy of Digital Earth.
The construction of roads to access logging, oil, and mining sites in the rainforest opens vast stretches of forest to exploitation by landless peasants who are responsible for the majority of rainforest destruction today. Generally these roads are funded by governments and development agencies, but some are also financed by private development interests. One of the most famous projects is the Trans-Amazonian highway in Brazil, which opened up the Roraima state to widespread invasion and deforestation by miners and colonists.
A new road project in South America that will link Amazon outposts in Brazil to Pacific Ocean ports in Peru is of great concern to environmentalists and indigenous-rights groups. The road—known as the "transoceanic highway" -- runs through the state of Madre de Dios in southeastern Peru, an area of extraordinarily diverse rainforest.
Roads in Latin America and other parts of the world are increasingly the result of political pressure from corporate interests, namely loggers and industrial agricultural firms, rather than government-backed poverty alleviation and development efforts. In the Amazon, the power cattle and soy lobby has pushed for infrastructure development so ranchers and farmers can exploit new lands and get their products to market.
Habitat fragmentation is a serious threat to biodiversity and patches of forest worldwide (also see
chapters 9 and 10). As great expanses of forest are increasingly chopped into smaller blocks, edge effects alter the the flora and fauna of forests. Fragmented patches of forest are subject to drying winds that increase the frequency of tree falls. Tree falls tear gaps in the canopy, destroying its function of moderating the humidity, temperature, and heat conditions of the forest floor. These changes affect the species that inhabit the forest patch, usually reducing diversity. Many rare species that dwell in the deep primary forest are unable to cope with the new conditions and are replaced by more common, weedier species. The drier forest conditions also mean that agricultural fires set in the surrounding scrubland and savanna are more likely to burn through the forest patch. During the Indonesian and Brazilian fires of 1997 and 1998, such forest patches went up in smoke at an alarming rate. Fragmented forests also suffer a loss of biomass—up to 36 percent—in the first few years after fragmentation.
Global climate change initiated by global warming is expected to have wide-ranging effects for tropical rainforests
(also see chapter 9).
Changes in weather patterns, rainfall distribution, and temperature will result in the conversion of rainforest into drier forest in some areas and the conversion of other forms of forests into tropical forest. Should sea levels rise, large tracts of rainforest and enormous areas of mangrove forest will be affected. Additionally, though tropical forests and their species have lived through significant climate changes in the past (Pleistocene and Holocene epochs), they have less resilience to climate change in the future due to fragmentation and degradation from human activities. In response to global climate change, communities will need to migrate, an action that will be more difficult because of habitat alteration and fragmentation.
A December 2005 simulation by the National Center for Atmospheric Research projects increased temperatures in the Amazon basin due to the conversion of moisture-producing forest into less-productive pasture and cropland.
Markets could save forests: An interview with Dr. Tom Lovejoy
(3/20/2008) Market mechanisms are increasingly seen as a way to address environmental problems, including tropical deforestation. In particular, compensation for ecosystem services like carbon sequestration — a concept known by the acronym REDD for "reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation" — may someday make conservation a profitable enterprise in which carbon traders are effectively saving rainforests simply by their pursuit of profit. Protecting rainforests and their resident biodiversity would be an unintentional, but happy byproduct of profit-seeking endeavors.
Fragmentation puts Mexican howlers at risk
(3/3/2008) Forest fragmentation is putting mantled howler monkeys in southern Mexico at risk, reports a new study, published in the inaugural issue of the open access e-journal Tropical Conservation Science.
Rainforest fragmentation affects reptiles and amphibians
(2/20/2008) Deforestation of tropical ecosystems is one of the major threats to biological diversity. Anthropogenic activities transform tropical environments into semi-natural landscapes generating a great amount of forest edge that limits with pastures and agricultural lands.
Amazon riparian zones need to be expanded to protect wildlife finds study
(2/19/2008) Strips of forest mandated by Brazilian law along rivers and streams in the Amazon rainforest are too narrow to effectively safeguard biodiversity, reports new research published in the journal Conservation Biology.
Parasites a key to the decline of red colobus monkeys in forest fragments
(10/25/2007) Forest fragmentation threatens biodiversity, often causing declines or local extinctions in a majority of species while enhancing the prospects of a few. A new study from the University of Illinois shows that parasites can play a pivotal role in the decline of species in fragmented forests. This is the first study to look at how forest fragmentation increases the burden of infectious parasites on animals already stressed by disturbances to their habitat.
