Brazil's Amazon rainforest twice as deforested as estimated: study

0 Comments | AFP, October, 2005

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Stealthy selective logging under the dense canopy of Brazil's Amazon rainforest has left twice the amount of the fragile forest degraded by human activities as previously estimated, a US study said.

The worse-than-expected degradation of the Amazon, known as "the lungs of the world" for its ability to absorb greenhouse gases, means that more carbon is being released into the atmosphere than previously thought, the researchers said in an article in the October 21 edition of the journal Science.

Based on a new, high-resolution satellite data analysis, a team of researchers led by Gregory Asner of Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology in Stanford, California said they found that "forest degradation in the Brazilian Amazon has been...