DRY FOREST DEFORESTATION DYNAMICS IN BRAZIL’S PONTAL BASIN

The Influence of Forest Management Regimes on Deforestation in a Central Indian Dry Deciduous Forest Landscape

This research examines the impact of forest management regimes, with various degrees of restriction, on forest conservation in a dry deciduous Indian forest landscape. Forest change is mapped using Landsat satellite images from 1977, 1990, 1999, and 2011. The landscape studied has lost 1478 km2 of dense forest cover between 1977 and 2011, with a maximum loss of 1002 km2 of dense forest between ...

Ecological feedbacks following deforestation create the potential for a catastrophic ecosystem shift in tropical dry forest.

The long-term ecological response to recurrent deforestation associated with shifting cultivation remains poorly investigated, especially in the dry tropics. We present a study of phosphorus (P) dynamics in the southern Yucatán, highlighting the possibility of abrupt shifts in biogeochemical cycling resulting from positive feedbacks between vegetation and its limiting resources. After three cul...

Deforestation and Forest Fragmentation in the Amazon

The Dynamics of Deforestation in the Wet and Dry Tropics: A Comparison with Policy Implications

Forests in the dry tropics differ significantly from forests in the humid tropics in their biomass and in their socio-ecological contexts, so it might be reasonable to assume that the dynamics that drive deforestation in these two settings would also differ. Until recently, difficulties in measuring the extent of dry tropical forests have made it difficult to investigate this claim empirically....

Impact of deforestation in the Amazon basin on cloud climatology.

Shallow clouds are prone to appear over deforested surfaces whereas deep clouds, much less frequent than shallow clouds, favor forested surfaces. Simultaneous atmospheric soundings at forest and pasture sites during the Rondonian Boundary Layer Experiment (RBLE-3) elucidate the physical mechanisms responsible for the observed correlation between clouds and land cover. We demonstrate that the at...