{"id":43713,"date":"2015-03-07T11:59:59","date_gmt":"2015-03-07T16:59:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetsave.com\/?p=43713"},"modified":"2015-03-07T11:59:59","modified_gmt":"2015-03-07T16:59:59","slug":"tropical-deforestation-rates-have-soared-not-slowed-down-satellite-data-shows-contradicting-un-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetsave.com\/articles\/tropical-deforestation-rates-have-soared-not-slowed-down-satellite-data-shows-contradicting-un-study\/","title":{"rendered":"Tropical Deforestation Rates Have Soared Not Slowed Down, Satellite Data Shows, Contradicting UN Study"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tropical deforestation rates have actually soared over recent years, rather than decreased as was previously estimated in a prominant report from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization’s Forest Resource Assessment, according to new research.<\/p>\n

The reason for this disparity is a simple one, the UN estimate was based on what people said they did, the new ones are based on what people actually did (determined via satellite imagery\/data). The apparently near eternal failing of people, in other words — say one thing, do another.<\/p>\n

\"Deforestation\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The disparity in this case in huge though — the difference between a 25% decrease in deforestation (the claim), and a 62% increase in deforestation (the reality). Getting industrial culture\/people to stop cutting down forests is probably like trying to get a crack addict off crack — or a flashing lights on a screen obsessed modern person to give up their ‘smartphone’, for that matter.<\/p>\n

The new findings are based on the compilation of huge amounts of Landsat image data — there’s not really much you could argue with, the images show the uptick in rates of tropical deforestation quite clearly over the 20 year period in question.<\/p>\n

“Several satellite-based local and regional studies have been made for changing rates of deforestation (during) the 1990s and 2000s, but our study is the first pan-tropical scale analysis,” explained University of Maryland, College Park, geographer Do-Hyung Kim, the lead author of the new study.<\/p>\n

A recent press release<\/a> provides details:<\/p>\n

Kim and his University of Maryland colleagues Joseph Sexton and John Townshend looked at 34 forested countries which comprise 80% of forested tropical lands. They analyzed 5,444 Landsat scenes from 1990, 2000, 2005 and 2010 with a hectare-scale (100 by 100 meter) resolution to determine how much forest was lost and gained. Their procedure was fully automated and computerized both to make the huge datasets manageable and to minimize human error.<\/em><\/p>\n

They found that during the 1990-2000 period the annual net forest loss across all the countries was 4 million hectares (15,000 square miles) per year. During the 2000-2010 period, the net forest loss rose to 6.5 million hectares (25,000 square miles) per year — a 62% increase is the rate of deforestation. That last rate is the equivalent to clear cutting an area the size of West Virginia<\/a> or Sri Lanka each year, or deforesting an area the size of Norway every five years.<\/em><\/p>\n

In terms of where the deforestation was happening, they found that tropical Latin America showed the largest increase of annual net loss of 1.4 million hectares (5,400 square miles) per year from the 1990s to the 2000s, with Brazil<\/a> topping the list at 0.6 million hectares (2,300 square miles) per year. Tropical Asia showed the second largest increase at 0.8 million hectares (3,100 square miles) per year, with similar trends across the countries of Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand and the Philippines. Tropical Africa showed the least amount of annual net forest area loss. Still, there was a steady increase of net forest loss in tropical Africa due to cutting primarily in Democratic Republic of Congo<\/a> and Madagascar.<\/em><\/p>\n