By Robert T. Walker Over the past 25 years that I have been conducting environmental research in the Amazon, I have witnessed the the ongoing destruction of the world’s biggest rainforest. Twenty percent of it has been deforested by now—an area larger than Texas. I therefore grew hopeful when environmental policies began to take effect […]
Extreme floods have become more frequent in the Amazon Basin in just the last two to three decades, according to a new study. After analyzing 113 years of Amazon River levels in Port of Manaus, Brazil, researchers found that severe floods happened roughly every 20 years in the first part of the 20th century. Now, […]
By Doug Boucher I was recently invited by the editors of the journal Tropical Conservation Science to write an update of a 2013 article on deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon that I had published with Sarah Roquemore and Estrellita Fitzhugh. They asked me to review how deforestation has changed over the past five years. The […]
By Daisy Dunne The vast mangroves of the Amazon store twice as much carbon per hectare as the region’s tropical forests, new research shows. The relatively understudied ecosystem also stores 10 times more carbon than Amazon savannahs—a type of grassy plain with sparsely populated trees, according to the study. However, the wetlands face threats from […]
A first-of-its-kind study published Monday shows that tax havens don’t just shelter the wealth of celebrities and large corporations—they also obscure the financial transactions behind environmental destruction. The study, published in Nature Ecology and Evolution by the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University and Global Economic Dynamics and the Biosphere (GEDB) at the Royal Swedish […]
By Jason Bittel At last count, there were 505 nonhuman primate species living in the wilds of 90 countries across the globe. That might make you think of Earth as the Planet of the Apes (plus monkeys, lemurs, tarsiers and lorises), but according to a large study published last month, those statistics are a little […]
Scientists have discovered another factor that might interact with rising carbon dioxide emissions to influence climate change—tropical forests. In a study published in Nature Climate Change Friday, researchers found that the way tropical forests interact with increased atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide could alter rainfall patterns, drying out the Amazon rainforest and increasing precipitation in […]
A team of scientists on board the Greenpeace Esperanza ship have documented the existence of a rhodolith field where French company Total intends to drill for oil, 120km off the northern coast of Brazil. The finding proves the existence of a reef formation in the area and invalidates Total’s Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), which states […]
Amazon Watch stands with Ecuadorian communities in rejecting a misguided judgment delaying justice for some 30,000 indigenous people and farmers who continue to suffer from the company’s toxic legacy in the Amazon rainforest. The decision—handed down yesterday by New York District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan—also underscores the threat that well-financed corporations pose to justice and the rule […]
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