Physical and human dimensions of deforestation in Amazonia
Skole, D.L.; Chomentowski, W.H.; Salas, W.A.
BioScience 44: 4-22
1994
ISSN/ISBN: 0006-3568 Accession: 009939497
An interdisciplinary approach is needed to analyze tropical deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. This region has the largest intact tropical forest in the world, but it also has the world's highest deforestation rate. While it seems clear that tropical deforestation is the result of many interrelated social, economic, and environmental factors, researchers disagree over how these factors interact to stimulate deforestation. The writers propose an interdisciplinary approach to the study of deforestation that would involve remote satellite sensing, case studies and field investigations of the local-scale dynamics of deforestation, and examination of institutional and economic factors that originate outside the Amazon but that drive Amazonian deforestation at the local level.