Deforestation in Brazil - 2009 - Deforestation in Brazil - 2009 - View of deforestation...

Deforestation in Brazil - 2009 - Deforestation in Brazil - 2009 - View of deforestation in Rondonia, one of the Brazilian states where deforestation is the most intensive. In 1978, deforestation covered 4200 square km of the state, in 1988 about 30,000 square km and in 2003 about 67,000 square km. Image obtained by Terra satellite on 21 August 2009. The Amazon forest appears in green, the areas deforested in light colours. The state of Rondonia in western Brazil is one of the most deforested parts of the Amazon. In the past three decades, clearing and degradation of the state's original 208,000 square kilometers of forest (about 51.4 million acres, an area slightly smaller than the state of Kansas) has been rapid: 4,200 square kilometers cleared by 1978; 30,000 by 1988; and 53,300 by 1998. By 2003, an estimated 67,764 square kilometers of rainforest - - an area larger than the state of West Virginia - - had been cleared. Here is a satellite image from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra satellite taken on August 21, 2009. Intact forest is deep green, while cleared areas are tan (bare ground) or light green (crops, pasture, or occasionally, second - growth forest)