The AMAZON ( PLEASE HELP !! )?

Question

I Dont mean the website, I Mean the rainforest =P !

ANYWAY ...

What dangers does it face ? ?

Were having a big debate ! and ALOT of us dont know , we have searched around the internet but not any luck ! Some of us think it will dry up , and we know the cutting down trees has something to do with it !

PLEASE HELP !!

SETTLE OUR DEBATE !!

WHO EVER GiVES THE MOST iNFO GETS THE TEN POiNTS =P !

AS LONG AS iT iS CORRECT THOUGH =P !!

Answer 1

Deforestation

Deforestation is the conversion of forested areas to non-forested areas. The main sources of deforestation in the Amazon are human settlement and development of the land. Between 1991 and 2000, the total area of forest lost in the Amazon rose from 415,000 to 587,000 km², an area twice the size of Portugal, with most of the lost forest becoming pasture for cattle.

History of Deforestation in the Amazon



Urarina shaman, 1988.Prior to the early 1960’s, access to the Amazon was incredibly restricted and aside from partial clearing along rivers the forest remained basically intact. The key point in deforestation of the Amazon was when the colonists established farms within the forest during the 1600s. Their farming system was based on crop cultivation and the slash and burn method. The colonists were unable to successfully manage their fields and the crops due to the loss of soil fertility and weed invasion. The soils in the Amazon are productive for just a short period of time, and the farmers are therefore constantly moving and clearing more and more land. Amazonian colonization was ruled by cattle raising because ranching required little labor, generated decent profits, and awarded social status in the community. However the results of the farming lead to extensive deforestation and caused extensive environmental damage. An estimated 30% of the deforestation is due to small farmers and the intensity within the area that they inhabit is greater than the area occupied by the medium and large ranchers who possess 89% of the Legal Amazon’s private land. This emphasizes the importance of using previously cleared land for agricultural use, rather the typical easiest political path of distributing still-forested areas. In the Brazilian Amazon, the amount of small farmers versus large landholders changes frequently with economic and demographic pressures.

Causes of Deforestation in the Amazon

The annual rate of deforestation in the Amazon region has continued to increase from 1990 to 2003 because of factors at local, national, and international levels. Brazil is currently the second-largest global producer of soybeans after the United States, and as prices for soybeans rise, the soy farmers are pushing northwards into forested areas of the Amazon. As stated in Brazilian legislation, clearing land for crops or fields is considered an ‘effective use’ of land and is the beginning towards land ownership.Cleared property is also valued 5–10 times more than forested land and for that reason valuable to the owner whose ultimate objective is resale. As stated by Michael Williams,“The people of Brazil have always thought of the Amazon as a communal possession which they felt free to hack, burn, and abandon at will.” The soy industry is the principal source of foreign currency for Brazil; therefore, the needs of soy farmers have been used to validate many of the controversial transportation projects that are currently developing in the Amazon. The first two highways: the Belém-Brasília (1958) and the Cuiaba-Porto Velho (1968) were the only federal highways in the Legal Amazon to be paved and passable year-round before the late 1990’s. These two highways are said to be “at the heart of the ‘arc of deforestation’,” which at present is the focal point area of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. The Belém-Brasilia highway attracted nearly two million settlers in the first twenty years. The success of the Belém-Brasilia highway in opening up the forest was re-enacted as paved roads continued to be developed unleashing the irrepressible spread of settlement. The completions of the roads were followed by a wave of resettlement and the settlers had a significant effect on the forest.

Conservation



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

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, and the increase in the greenhouse gases emission by industrialized countries. 9,169 square miles of rain forest were cut down in 2003 alone.

In Brazil alone, more than 90 indigenous groups have been destroyed by colonists since the 1900s, and with them have gone centuries of accumulated knowledge of the medicinal value of rainforest species. As indigenous territories continue to be destroyed by deforestation, and ecocide, such as in the Peruvian Amazon indigenous peoples' rainforest communities continue to disappear, while others, like the Urarina continue to struggle to fight for their cultural survival and the fate of their forested territories. Meanwhile, the relationship between nonhuman primates in the subsistence and symbolism of indigenous lowland South American peoples has gained increased attention, as has ethno-biology and community-based conservation efforts.

From 2002 to 2006, the conserved land in the Amazon Rainforest has almost tripled and deforestation rates have dropped up to 60%. About 100 million hectares, or 250 million acres have been put onto some sort of conservation, which adds up to a current amount of 173 million hectares or 432.5 million acres.

Response to climate change



Anthropogenic emission of greenhouse gases broken down by sector for the year 2000.There is evidence that there have been significant changes in Amazon rainforest vegetation over the last 21,000 years through the last glaciation (LGM) and subsequent deglaciation. Analyses of sediment deposits from Amazon basin paleolakes and from the Amazon Fan indicate that rainfall in the basin during the LGM was lower than for the present, and this was almost certainly associated with reduced moist tropical vegetation cover in the basin. There is debate, however, over how extensive this reduction was. Some scientists argue that the rainforest was reduced to small, isolated refugia separated by open forest and grassland; other scientists argue that the rainforest remained largely intact but extending less far to the North, South and East than is seen today . This debate has proved difficult to resolve because the practical limitations of working in the rainforest mean that data sampling is biased away from the centre of the Amazon basin, and both explanations are reasonably well supported by the available data.

One computer model of future climate change due to greenhouse gas emissions shows that the Amazon rainforest could become unsustainable under conditions of severely reduced rainfall and increased temperatures, leading to an almost complete loss of rainforest cover in the basin by 2100. However, simulations of Amazon basin climate change across many different models are not consistent in their estimation of any rainfall response, ranging from weak increases to strong decreases . The result indicates that the rainforest could be threatened though the 21st century by climate change in addition to deforestation.

Impact of Amazon drought

In 2005, parts of the Amazon basin experienced the worst drought in 100 years, and there are indications that 2006 could be a second successive year of drought[33]. A 23 July 2006 article in the UK newspaper The Independent reported Woods Hole Research Center results showing that the forest in its present form could survive only three years of drought.Scientists at the Brazilian National Institute of Amazonian Research argue in the article that this drought response, coupled with the effects of deforestation on regional climate, are pushing the rainforest towards a "tipping point" where it would irreversibly start to die. It concludes that the forest is on the brink of being turned into savanna or desert, with catastrophic consequences for the world's climate.

According to the WWF, the combination of climate change and deforestation increases the drying effect of dead trees that fuels forests fires.

Answer 2

And a lot more than this:

Deforestation is the conversion of forested areas to non-forested areas. The main sources of deforestation in the Amazon are human settlement and development of the land.[4] Between 1991 and 2000, the total area of forest lost in the Amazon rose from 415,000 to 587,000 km², an area twice the size of Portugal, with most of the lost forest becoming pasture for cattle.[5]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/amazon_rain...

http://rainforests.mongabay.com/amazon/....

http://www.blueplanetbiomes.org/amazon.h...

http://www.amazonrainforest.org/...

Answer 3

if you read this then you will be able to see what will happen when they tear it down when i was in school i organized a group that studied the amazon rainforest and got in touch with other national groups i received pictures of the deforestation and them kiling things it was awful but it helped us and we now own 3 acres of the rainforest and have over 200 pygmie people living on our acres and some other tribes. Plus wildlife if you need more information feel free to contact me.

The Amazon rainforest, also known as Amazonia, is one of the world's greatest natural resources. Because its vegetation continuously recycles carbon dioxide into oxygen, it has been described as the "Lungs of our Planet". About 20% of earth's oxygen is produced by the Amazon rainforest.

The Amazon rainforest gets its name from the Amazon River, the life force of the rainforest. The Amazon River begins in the Peruvian Andes, and winds its way east over the northern half of South America. It meets the Atlantic Ocean at Belem, Brazil. The main river is about 4,080 miles long. Its drainage basin covers 2,722,000 million square miles, and lies in the countries of Brazil, Columbia, Peru, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and the three Guyanas. Sixteen percent of all the world's river water flows through the Amazon delta. Twenty eight billion gallons of water flow into the Atlantic every minute, diluting the salinity of the ocean for more than 100 miles offshore. The Amazon rainforest watershed is home to the world's highest level of biodiversity.

Amazonia receives about 9 feet of rain every year. Fifty percent of this returns to the atmosphere through the foliage of trees. Most of the Amazon River's water comes from the annual snowmelt high in the Peruvian Andes. Between June and October, the water level rises by 30 to 45 feet. Tens of millions of acres of rainforest are covered by water as the flood advances, reaching as far inland from the main channel as 12 miles.

Some 15 million years ago, the Amazon River flowed westward into the Pacific Ocean. When the South American plate moved into another tectonic plate, the Andes Mountains slowly rose up and blocked the flow of the river. As the river system backed up, freshwater lakes were formed, and the environment of the Amazon basin changed drastically. Then about 10 million years ago the river found its way eastward towards the Atlantic.

The Amazon rainforest is the drainage basin for the Amazon River and its many tributaries. The northern half of the South American continent is shaped like a shallow dish. About 1,100 tributaries, seventeen of which are over 1,000 miles long, drain into this depression. Whenever rain falls in the river basin, it all drains into Amazon rainforest and into the Amazon River. The Amazon is the largest river system in the world. At some points, the Amazon River is one mile wide, while at other points it can be thirty-five miles wide. At Belem, where the river flows into the Atlantic Ocean, it can be 200 to 300 miles across, depending on the season. Some of the animals that make their home here are river otters, freshwater river dolphins, turtles, piranha, manatees, electric eels, and a remarkable, giant air-breathing fish called the piraracu.

The world's largest tropical rainforest, Amazonia covers more than half of Brazil. The canopy of Amazonia is less studied than the ocean floor. Scientists believe that the canopy may contain half of the world's species. Over 500 mammals, 175 lizards and over 300 other reptiles species, and one third of the world's birds live in Amazonia. It is estimated that about 30 million insect types can be found here. Competition for survival is fierce. This may explain why over millions of years of evolution so many highly adapted species have evolved in the canopy of Amazonia. The most intense competition is between animals and plants. Both plants and animals have made adaptations to defend themselves from being eaten, and to overcome these defensive systems. Plants trap sunlight and turn it into energy for themselves and the herbivores of the canopy.

Some animals found in the canopy are the harpy eagle, which preys on monkeys, kinkajous, sloth, reptiles, and other birds. Sloths spend most of their lives in the treetops. Their diet of low nutrition leaves forces them to conserve energy, causing the sloth to spend 80% of its life resting. A large portion of a howler monkey's diet consists of leaves, which are hard to digest. Their metabolism is so low that they need to warm themselves up in the sunlight after a chilly night. Leaf-cutter ants are responsible for harvesting a sixth of the area's leaves, bringing leaf fragments to their underground nests. They play a critical role in the rainforest's ecosystem by pruning the vegetation, which stimulates new growth, and breaking down the leaves to renew the soil.

The Amazon rainforest consists of four layers or communities. Each layer has unique ecosystems, plants, and animals adapted to that system. The emergent layer is the tallest layer, where trees can be as tall as 200 feet, and rise well above the canopy. Here they are exposed to fluctuation of temperature, wind, and rainfall. The leaves are small and covered with a thick waxy surface to hold water. They take advantage of the wind by developing winged seeds that are blown to other parts of the forest. Trunks can be up to 16 feet around and braced by massive buttress roots. Some of the animals find everything they need to survive in the emergent layer and never leave it.

The main layer of the rainforest is the canopy. Most canopy trees have smooth, oval leaves that come to a point, known as a drip tip. This allows water to flow off the leaf quickly and prevents the growth of fungi, mosses, and lichens. The canopy's leaves are very dense and filter out about 80% of the sunlight. Many flowers and fruits grow in this layer. Epiphytes cover every available surface and bromeliads provide drinking water for the many canopy creatures, and breeding pools for tree frogs.

The understory only gets about two to five percent of the available sunlight. The plants find unique ways to adapt to this shadowy existence. Their solar-collecting leaves grow large, and are dark green in color. They don't often grow more than 12 feet in height. Because there is very little air movement, they rely on insects and animals to pollinate their flowers. Some grow large flowers and fruits low on their trunks to allow larger, non-climbing animals to eat and disperse their fruit. The largest concentrations of insects inhabit this layer.

The forest floor is the lowest layer and almost no plants grow here. Only about 2% of the sunlight filters through. The floor is littered with decomposing vegetation and organisms that are broken down into usable nutrients. Many nutrients are locked into this biomass. Tree roots stay close to the surface to access these nutrients. Large animals forage for roots and tubers, while insects like millipedes, scorpions, and earthworms use the litter as a source of food.

Despite all of its abundant richness, Amazonia's giant trees grow in the poorest of soil. The top two inches of the acidic soil contains 99% of the nutrients. Nine tenths of the forest's energy is stored in the leaves and tissues of the trees themselves. The forest floor is a porous mass that prevents minerals and nutrients from being washed away and lost. As soon as a tree falls, or a creature dies, decomposers begin to turn it into a food source and mulch. The vegetation to renew the cycle quickly absorbs the nutrients that are released. This is the tightest, most efficient ecosystem in nature. The destruction of one part of the system can spell the destruction of the whole system.

High temperatures and the amount of rain are the same throughout the year in Amazonia. The climate is warm and humid, with average temperatures around 79° F. The difference between day and night time temperatures is greater than those between seasons.

Today, more than 20% of the Amazon rainforest has been destroyed and is gone forever. The land is being cleared for cattle ranches, mining operations, logging, and subsistence agriculture. Some forests are being burned to make charcoal to power industrial plants. More than half of the world's rainforests have been destroyed by fire and logging in the last 50 years. Over 200,000 acres are burned every day around the world, or over 150 acres every minute. Experts also estimate that 130 species of plants, animals, and insects are lost every day. At the current rate of destruction, it is estimated that the last remaining rainforests could be destroyed in less than 40 years.

Native peoples of the Amazon rainforest have used different plants for centuries as cures and potions for their health and survival. Scientists are now discovering that many of the plants are sources for new drugs for AIDS, cancer, diabetes, arthritis, and Alzheimer's. Quinine, muscle relaxants, steroids, and caner drugs have already been discovered. Today 121 prescription drugs sold around the world come from plant-derived sources. Although 25% of all drugs are derived from rainforest ingredients, scientists have tested only 1% of tropical plants.

Another concern for Amazonia is the fate of it indigenous people. An estimated 10 million Indians were living in Amazonia about five hundred years ago. Today there are less than 200,000 indigenous peoples left in Amazonia. More than 90 tribes have been destroyed since the 1900's. Most of the shamans and medicine men remaining are 70 years old or more. With them goes a wealth of knowledge of medicinal species of plants and organisms.

once the chop it all down we will have no more of this.

Answer 4

when the trees are gone, the native herbs will be destoryed

the animals who live in the forest will also be lost

then the earth erotion will occur, then flood will be a problem

then people won't be able to produce enough food

if there is no wood, people can produce papers, and energy

that birds that fly over amazon may also not be able to find food, so they may not be able to get to their original places, etc

Answer 5

Please check with Rainforest Relief (link below).  

The primary sources of destruction are logging, mining and oil & gas extraction, and large scale monoculture plantations (soy as previously mentioned, orange groves (read Minute Maid labels and see where its from), palm products etc.) and non-native wood species.  The road building required of these activities promotes other forms of destruction by making pathways into the forest: slash and burn agriculture and just cutting the forest down to raise crops.  

In many cases, local inhabitants are uprooted to get to the resource.  Sometimes people are killed.

In terms of the environmental impact, the main thing to understand is that with the large trees in the Amazon, a single tree holds hundreds of SPECIES of plants and animals.  Importation of wood from large tree species like Ipe into developed nations is actually increasing, and the tropical timber traders have cleverly manipulated a myth that Ipe (aka 'Pao Lope'), as a species, is logged sustainably.  They are exploiting the fact that a few companies with Ipe concessions have responsibly taken on the process of Forest Stewardship Council certification.  These good actors are really being robbed by people who lack the conscience to care about the answer to your question.

The soy issue also needs to be examined since it is touted as Brazil's key to energy independence.  I don't mean to rain on the bio-diesel parade, but Brazil's bio-fuel comes from soy grown where the Amazon rainforest used to be.

As you can see, there are many sources of destruction and therefore numerous ways for people who don't live in the Amazon to still make a difference.  Just because an area is proclaimed as protected doesn't mean it is; the same is true of claims that Amazon-sourced wood was logged sustainably.  In both cases, we as citizens, voters and consumers need to fill the void left by a lack of enforcement capability (or lack of will to enforce protective laws) in the Amazon.

Answer 6

The soil in the rainforest is a laterite soil which will be good for a couple of years of crops, then turn into something like concrete. The danger is desertification of the rainforests. Already there are areas of drought in Brasil caused by clear-cutting of trees.

By cutting trees wholesale you are not leaving corridors for the animals to use to go from one browsing or hunting site to another. Animals of the rainforests don't like crossing empty space, and most of them live in the canopy as it is.

The rainforest also creates a lot of free oxygen for the world, and absorbs a lot of carbon gases , and we need to increase the amount of breathable air that we have.