Amazon Rainforest

The Amazon Rainforest is a term widely used to describe the moist broadleaf forests of the Amazon Basin, encompassing 7 million km2 (1.2 billion acres), with parts located within nine nations: Brazil (with 60% of the rainforest), Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana. This forest represents over half of the planet's remaining rainforests. States or departments in four nations bear the name Amazonas for the Amazon.

Environmentalism

Some environmentalists commonly stress the fact that there is not only a biological incentive to protecting the rain forest, but also an economic one. One hectare in the Peruvian Amazon has been calculated to have a value of $6820 if intact forest is sustainable harvested for fruits, latex, and timber; $1000 if clear-cut for commercial timber (not sustainable harvested); or $148 if used as cattle pasture. The assumptions of this study have been widely challenged however.

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The Força Aérea Brasileira has been using EMBRAER R-99 surveillance aircraft, as part of the SIVAM program, to monitor the forest. At a conference in July 2004, scientists warned that the rainforest will no longer be able to absorb the millions of tons of greenhouse gases annually, as it usually does, because of the increased pace of rainforest destruction.

Related Topics:
Força Aérea Brasileira - EMBRAER - R-99 - SIVAM - July 2004 - Greenhouse gas

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9,169 square miles of rain forest were cut down in 2003 alone. In Brazil alone, European colonists have destroyed more than 90 indigenous tribes since the 1900's. With them have gone centuries of accumulated knowledge of the medicinal value of rainforest species. As their homelands continue to be destroyed by deforestation, rainforest peoples are also disappearing.

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