Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
+
policy
U
ntil recently, the timber industry and conservationists struck
a compromise with selective logging—a process that removes
certain trees from specific locations in the forest, as opposed
to deforestation, the clear-cutting of large regions. Most scientists
and environmentalists believed this process was sustainable and not
particularly harmful to forests. However, research led by Dr. Greg Asner, a
scientist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington and assistant professor,
by courtesy, in Stanford’s Department of Geological and Environmental
Sciences, used advanced satellite imaging to prove that selective logging
does, in fact, destroy regions of rainforest in the Brazilian Amazon by
acting as a catalyst for large-scale deforestation.
”
been proven to be 32% within 4 years.
A Sharper Eye in the Sky
Asner is part of the international initiative “Large Scale Biosphere-
The largest remaining tropical
forest in the world, the Amazon
Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia” (LBA), a Brazil-led project that
rainforest is as large as the began in 1997 to study the Amazon Rainforest its deforestation. Selective
continental United States. It logging seemed sustainable compared to the large-scale clear-cutting
is home to nearly 10% of the that resulted from the creation of cattle pastures, the primary reason
world’s mammals and 15% of
the world’s known land-based
for deforestation. However, before Asner and his crew at the Carnegie
plant species. Institution began their research in 1999, there had been no studies
documenting the regional impacts of selective logging on the rainforest.
With their new developments in satellite monitoring technology, Asner’s
team revealed the startling truth about selective logging and its not-so-
Photo Credit: Don Deering, NASA/LBA Project
sustainable implications.
Measuring Deforestation
The use of satellites and aircraft to measure and map the changes in forest canopy, the uppermost layer of branches,
is called remote sensing. This method has been historically used to study changes in the Amazon due to large-scale
deforestation. Asner and his crew have advanced this technology to map out the effects of selective logging in the
Brazilian Amazon. They developed a high-resolution, automated remote-sensing analysis called the Carnegie Landsat
Analysis System (CLAS). CLAS is capable of detecting finer changes in the forest and was used to quantify the amount
of selective logging in the top five timber-producing states of the Brazilian Amazon.
62 stanford scientific
ethics
+
policy
layout design:
layout design: Annie Lee volume v 63