SATELLITE analysis of the Brazilian rainforest has revealed that logging is causing more than twice as much damage as previously thought. Many ecologists believe that it may be contributing to the region’s worst drought in 40 years.
Previous satellite analyses could not tell normal forest from areas that had been thinned by selective logging, in which only valuable timber such as mahogany is removed. Only areas that had been completely cleared were discernible from orbit, and most estimates of selective logging came from questionable reports of local sawmill activities.
Now researchers from the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Stanford, California,…
