Knowra Deforestation of the Amazon rainforest Deforestation of the Amazon rainforest Deforestation of the Amazon rainforest is the clearing or degradation of forest across the Amazon Basin, driven chiefly by agriculture, cattle ranching, logging, mining, and infrastructure development.
Slash-and-burn agriculture : A land-clearing method that cuts vegetation and burns it to prepare fields or pasture. Fire often follows forest clearing to create pasture and cropland in the Amazon.
Timber industry : The economic activity of harvesting, processing, and selling wood and wood products. Logging removes valuable trees and can open forest to roads, fire, and later clearing.
Amazon rainforest : The vast tropical forest ecosystem spanning parts of nine South American countries. Deforestation removes habitat from the ecosystem whose extent and continuity are at stake.
Brazilian military government : The authoritarian regime that governed Brazil from 1964 to 1985. Its development policies promoted roads, settlement, and economic integration of the Amazon.
Deforestation-free supply chain : A supply chain designed to avoid products linked to forest clearing. It seeks to disconnect commodity production from Amazon forest conversion.
Cattle ranching : The raising of cattle for meat, dairy, or other products, often on pasture. Pasture expansion is a major direct driver of Amazon forest clearing.
Artisanal and small-scale gold mining : Small, often informal mining that extracts gold using labor-intensive methods. Gold mining clears forest and can contaminate Amazon waterways with mercury.
Amazonian biodiversity : The variety of species, genes, and ecosystems found in the Amazon region. Forest conversion destroys and fragments habitats supporting exceptional biological diversity.
Amazon rubber boom : A late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century surge in Amazonian rubber extraction and trade. Earlier extraction economies shaped settlement and infrastructure before modern frontier expansion.
Forest conservation : The protection and sustainable management of forests and their ecological functions. Conservation preserves forest cover where deforestation converts or degrades it.
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