LA Weekly

Everyone knows about the drought in the Amazon by now, but hardly anyone has pinned the cause to any kind of ecological destruction. This story in the Wall Street Journal questions whether the culprit is deforestation -- which has been happening faster than anyone imagined.

[A] study of the top five timber-producing states of the Brazilian Amazon showed that selectively logged areas, which previously had been hard to discern by researchers, ranged from 12,075 to 19,823 square kilometers per year between 1999 and 2002. Those areas were equivalent to an increase of 60% to 123% in deforestation of the Amazon beyond previous estimates. The study was led by researchers at the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution of Washington.

"We think this adds 25% more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere" from the Amazon than had been measured previously, said Michael Keller, an author of the study and an ecologist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service.

More in the journal Science on Friday, says WSJ.

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