Deforestation And Pollution Of The Amazon Rainforest Environmental Sciences Essay

The Amazon rainforest is the worlds largest remaining natural resource and represents 54% of the total rainforests left on Earth. The rainforest is located in Southern America and is an area of 2.5 million square miles, embracing nine countries; Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia and the Guiana’s. To put its size into perspective its land base is nearly the size of the lower 48 states of the U.S. It’s been named “Lungs of the Planet” because nearly 20% of the world’s oxygen is produced by it.

The Amazon River which is born in the Andean mountains of Peru flows for more than 4,000 miles ending at the Atlantic Ocean near Belem, Brazil. Along its journey it is fed by about 1,100 tributaries whereby its drainage basin is 2,700,000 square miles. It is the second longest river (first being the river Nile) in the World. It contains one-fifth of the world’s fresh water. [2]

The Amazon receives about nine feet of rain every year during rainy season, causing the water level to rise between 30 and 45 feet. The rain falls in the river basin and it all drains into the jungle and the Amazon River. Tens of millions of acres get flooded creating the world’s highest level of biodiversity with temperatures constant ant 25-30 degrees C, providing the perfect conditions for life. [1]

The Amazon rainforest has a great variety of life. In fact more than half of the world’s estimated ten million species of plants, animals and insects live in the tropical forest with the number of edible fruits estimated to be 3,000. Not only does it thrive with to support wildlife and plant life it’s believed to be the home of 250,000 Amazon natives, comprising of 215 ethnic groups with 170 different languages. It even has some tribes that have never had contact with the outside world.

Unfortunately this unique ecosystem faces environmental pressure that threatens its very existence. One of the primary threats is deforestation. Since 1970, over 200,000 square miles of Amazon rainforest have been lost due to deforestation, close to 20 percent of the Amazon rain forest. Scientists fear that an additional 20 percent of the trees will be lost over the next two decades, causing the forest’s ecology to unravel. This will lead to drought and forest fires further destroying the rainforest. The rainforest soils are now poor, lacking in fertility. Most of the nutrients are locked in the above ground plant growth. Due to the ecology of the ecosystem, recovery is difficult, if not impossible.

The rainforest is being exploited for short term profit in many ways which is destroying the Amazon and its ecosystem. The market forces of globalization are invading the Amazon whereby industrial-scale soybean producers, loggers and cattle ranchers are in a race to profit from the land in any means necessary. The government agents in place to protect the Amazon are often corrupt and ineffective or ill-equipped and outmatched. [3]

I will now go into some detail on each source of destruction to the Amazon rainforest and its damaging effects to the Amazon environment.

The Sources

Logging

The logging in Brazil is the result of urban consumption and trade rather than subsistence agriculture. Logging tropical hardwoods for exportation (teak, mahogany, etc) as well as other timber for furniture’s, ply wood, etc, followed by other wood-related industries such as chipboard and cardboard. The paper industry requires a massive amount of pulpwood trees. In order to satisfy the world’s demand, more and more of the rainforest is burned to the ground and replanted with pulpwood trees. [1] Most of these Logging sites are or were illegal and uncontrolled.

The image is an Illegal Logging Site where a young peasant activist in Brazil was murdered over an ongoing illegal logging conflict in the Amazon. [6]http://s0.geograph.org.uk/geophotos/01/22/65/1226569_bb5e4167.jpg

In the past three decades, hundreds of people have died in land wars; countless others endure fear and uncertainty, their lives threatened by those who profit from the theft of timber and land. [3]

Image 1: Ref. [6]

Studies by N. Mainville et al. [4] show that deforestation is causing soil erosion, degradation and leaching of naturally occurring mercury (Hg). They evaluated the impacts of deforestation on Andisol and Inceptisol fertility and Hg levels in the Napo River Valley, Ecuador, which is a main Amazonian deforestation front. They found that once deforested the soils are susceptible to significant and deleterious changes. “Loss of exchangeable cations and nitrates” [4] causing a reduction in soil fertility and limits cultivation productivity after clearing. After clearing there’s a decrease in the organic matter (-15% to-70% of C and N) and exchangeable cations (- 25%to- 60%) in a deforested area. Land clearing provokes considerable loss of soil Hg, this allows the Hg to be free and can be transported towards aquatic ecosystems. This Hg liberation from the soil leads one to believe that deforestation contributes to the Hg contamination of certain fish species as measured by Webb et al. (2004)[5].

Webb et al. (2004) [5] examined the relationship between fish eating habits, human mercury levels, and mercury levels in fish in three communities of the Napo River Valley. It is important to note the region is “without gold mining but with significant deforestation and volcanic soils with naturally high mercury levels”[5] .The area is influenced by the Andean cordillera which is region is considered to be one of the most active mercury belts on Earth due to its constant volcanic and tectonic activity, releasing more than 29 tonnes of Hg per year (Nriagu and Becker, 2003).

The way this occurs is that soil erosion occurs easier and faster to exposed deforested areas and the Hg travels to the aquatic systems whereby it is converted to methylmercury (MeHg) by bacteria in the water. MeHg is easily absorbed by aquatic organisms because of its strong affinity for sulfhydryl groups. The Hg is then stored in the muscle and gills of the fish. Amazonian riparian communities have been shown to possess Hg levels that are associated with fish consumption. They found that two rural communities were found to have higher fish consumption and hair mercury levels (8.71 g/g and 5.32 g/g) as compared to an urban community (1.87 g/g). The Hg can cause neurological damage when consumed humans. [5]

The Amazon is known to another source of Hg pollution through the processes of artisanal gold mining which will be discussed further on in the report.

Farming & Grazing

Once the trees are extracted and the loggers have moved on, the roads serve as conduits for an explosive mix of squatters, speculators, ranchers, farmers, and invariably, hired gunmen. [3]

60 percent of deforested land is used for farming and cattle grazing, according to research by Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) and its Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa). Most of the beef is destined for urban markets, whereas leather and other cattle products are primarily for export markets. Across the Amazon, the primary aim for cattle ranching is to get land claims, rather than produce beef or leather. If a farmer in on the land for more than 5 years they have the right to claim and sell it. The market-oriented cattle production has expanded rapidly during the past decade.

Farmers are using fire for clearing land and every year satellite images pick up tens of thousands of fires burning across the Amazon. http://photos.mongabay.com/07/1016nasa.jpg

Image 2: The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this image of the southern Amazon, showing widespread fires (locations marked in red) in the state of Mato Grosso, Brazil. NASA image courtesy of the MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center.

Image 2 Ref. [7]

This increase in forest fires are believed to be linked with the increase in Soy Farms and Cattle grazing. Soy farms are largest crop being grown and the crop exhausts the land after 3 or 4 crop cycles due to the lands poor-gradients condition and the lack of sustainable cultivation practices. As a consequence, farmers move deeper into the rainforest in search of new, fresh land using a slash and burn technique to clear the forest. Cattle grazing land also degrades fast due to the lack of gradients and overgrazing, which means new rainforest land needs to be obtained to satisfy their needs.

This chart shows the link between the expansion of soy farms and deforestation. Overall is doesn’t look like a large amount but http://photos.mongabay.com/07/0418_amazon_soy.jpg

This chart shows the surge in soy and cattle prices could be driving an increase in forest fires and deforestation. Soy farming is becoming a major driver of land-use change in the Amazon.http://photos.mongabay.com/07/soy_cattle_defor-568.jpg

Mining Operations

In the Amazon rainforest most mining revolves around alluvial gold deposits. The gold is found both in river channels and on the floodplains where rivers once ran. These deposits are actively mined by large-scale operators and illegal, smaller-scale miners. Both operators rely heavily on hydraulic mining techniques which involve blasting away at river banks, clearing floodplain forests, and using heavy machinery to expose potential gold-yielding deposits. Gold is usually extracted from this gravel using a sluice box to separate heavier sediment and mercury for amalgamating the precious metal. While most of the mercury (Hg) is removed for reuse or burned off, most end up in rivers. Studies have found that small-scale miners are less efficient with their use of Hg than industrial miners, releasing an estimated 2.91 pounds (1.32 kg) of mercury into waterways for every 2.2 pounds (1 kg) of gold produced. [8]

As mentioned before this amount of Hg release causes problems in the ecosystem, ending up in the food chain with toxic effects for top predators, including otters, birds of prey, and humans .Along with Hg release mining causes other problems, mining processes exposes previously buried metal sulfides to atmospheric oxygen causing their conversion to strong sulfuric acid and metal oxides, which run off into local waterways.

Gold mining also pushes the drive for deforestation as forests must be cleared to create mines. An area where this is evident is Peru’s Madre de Dios region. Using satellite imagery from NASA, researchers were able to follow rising deforestation due to artisanal gold mining in Peru. According the study, published in PLoS ONE, Two large mining sites saw the loss of 7,000 hectares of forest (15,200 acres)-an area larger than Bermuda-between 2003 and 2009.[8]Rainforest felled for gold mining appears in these satellite images as a pink scar in the 2009 view. A) is Guacamayo (12°51′S, 70°00′W) along the Interoceanic highway (which is the red line) and (B) is Colorado-Puquiri (12°44′S, 70°32′W) in the buffer zone of the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve. Image from: Gold Mining in the Peruvian Amazon: Global Prices, Deforestation, and Mercury Imports.

Image : Rainforest felled for gold mining appears in these satellite images as a pink scar in the 2009 view (A) is Guacamayo along the Interoceanic highway (which is the red line) and (B) is Colorado-Puquiri in the buffer zone of the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve.[9]

After fossil fuel burning, small-scale gold mining is the world’s second largest source of mercury pollution contributing around 1/3 of the world’s mercury pollution. Along with this damage to the environment it produces numerous social problems, according to the BBC, including drug trafficking, indentured labor, and child prostitution.[10]

Serra Pelada was a large gold mine in Brazil 430 km south of the mouth of the Amazon River. This gold mine was established in the 1980s and was known for corruption having roughly 100,000 miners, making it one of the largest mines in the world. The images taken by Sebastião Salgado capture this mass mining operation.[11]Due to the large scale of unregulated mining it lead to tons of mercury are released to the environment .http://plugcitarios.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Foto-Sebasti%C3%A3o-Salgado-02.jpgC:UsersendaDropboxYEAR 4Semester 8Environmental ForensicsAmazon Rain ForestImagessalgado_serra_pelada.jpg

The Affected

Deforesting the Amazon is good for the soy, timber and mining industries for short term profit however; it is not so good for the people who live in the region. It also leads to less biodiversity in plant and animal species. After deforesting the land is abused and this creates more pollution like the leaking of mercury into the food chain. The methods of deforestation like “slash and burn” cause forest fires which cause an increase in CO2 emissions which is not good for any form of life.

The most affected are the indigenous people of the area. Not only has it begun to destroy their sacred land and way of life but has caused violence for many years in the form of conflicts amongst large landowners, cattle ranchers, miners and loggers. The Indian Missionary Council, CIMI, reported that land invasions of the Brazilian Indian reservations by loggers and miners has risen since the mid-1990s. One Tribe that faced these was the Yanomani Indian tribe.

Yanomani Indian tribe

The Yanomani Indian tribe inhabits a roughly France-sized area of forest in northern Brazil and southern Venezuela. They lived in complete isolation until the 1970s when large numbers of gold miners invaded their territory and introduced diseases, like measles, tuberculosis, the flu, and malaria. As the tribe was isolated they were not resistant to these diseases and wiped the Yanomani Indian tribe from a population of 20,000 in the 1970s to a 9,000 (recorded in 1997). The gold miners caused violence as they invaded their homeland, polluted there rivers and fish with mercury as mentioned earlier and introduced arms to the tribes causing more violence in inter-village disputes. [13] Image Ref [14]: Yanomani Tribesmen http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2012/9/11/1347368365119/yanomami-tribe-in-venezue-008.jpg

There is progress being made in preserving their native land and the native tribes now have 26% percent of the Amazon basin protected for the indigenous population. The native communities are winning cases to protect and preserve their land. The Shipibo and Ese-eja Indians of Tres Islas community, in Peru’s south-east, went to Highest court “The Constitutional Court” over a rash of illegal logging and gold mining that was destroying their territory and won their case. [15]

The Progress for Change

Brazil’s environmental protection agency, Instituto Brasileiro does Meio Ambiente e dos Recursos Naturais Renováveis (IBAMA) are responsible for the protection of the Amazon Rainforest. IBAMA faced many difficulties including their headquarters being torched by an angry mob in 2004 after IBAMA agents and police broke a ring of timber traffickers, shutting down illegal sawmills and issuing millions of dollars in fines to loggers. In 2005, after gunmen hired by gold miners murdered Sister Dorothy Stang, an American-born nun and environmental activist, the Brazilian government accelerated a crackdown, suspending logging permits throughout the Amazon-most of which had been falsified to launder illegal timber. They seized truckload of contraband timber. Of the more than 300 people arrested, about 100 turned out to be IBAMA officials involved in a far-reaching conspiracy to sell millions of cubic feet of endangered hardwoods to the U.S., Europe, and Asia. IBAMA are turning to satellite technology but when the criminals are located IBAMA are often don’t have the manpower and equipment to shut these operations down.[3]Photo: Raid on land grabbers

Image Ref [3]: Agents from IBAMA, Brazil’s understaffed environmental protection agency, join a local police officer (with shotgun, at center) for a raid on land grabbers, illegally clearing forest.

Although IBAMA are struggling there has been great progress made since the 1980s is the reduction of deforestation and pollution in the Amazon Rainforest. Its believed that the decline in deforestation from 1988-1991 nicely matched the economic slowdown during the same period, while the rocketing rate of deforestation from 1993-1998 paralleled Brazil’s period of rapid economic growth.[16]

This chart shows the amount of deforestation in sq km from 1988 to 2012.It is clear there is a decline of deforestation from 2004 to present day. The figures are derived from official National Institute of Space Research (INPE) data. [16]http://photos.mongabay.com/06/braz_defor_88-05-lrg.jpg

The Decline in emissions from deforestation from 2004 to 2011 shows the progress being made. Annual emissions dropped by 57 percent between 2004 and 2011, 20 percentage points lower than the recorded drop in deforestation according to reports from the journal Global Change Biology. [17]Decline in emissions from deforestation.

Image Ref [17]; results are based on a new emissions tracking system developed by researchers at Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) and other institutions.[17]

Reduce greenhouse gas Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD)