Rainforests was cut by 89.6 percent in spite of the fact that 80 percent of the funds for this program come from donations by the Group of Seven richest countries in the world, the G-7. In addition, funding for Amazon forest research has been disrupted by the mass resignation of all 20 European Union Commissioners last month over a report accusing six of them of mismanagement. IPAM was promised a 1.4 million grant from the European Union to begin a year ago that Dr. Nepstad says has been held up by the Commissioners' resignation. And three IPAM funding proposals to the Pilot Program for Conservation of Brazil s Rainforests have not been moved forward. But in spite of the Woods Hole team's insecure financial situation, some funding has been found to continue.
Detailed studies are important to understanding what is occuring on the ground.
Part of the appeal of this forest vs. non-forest approach to assessing human impacts on tropical forests is its tractability, the study says. Forest conversion to agriculture is readily monitored from space using imagery from the Landsat Thematic Mapper satellites, permitting the development of deforestation maps of large regions at a reasonable cost and speed. But this method does not tell the whole story. In fact, as Dr. Nepstad's studies show, this method tells less than half of the story. All Rights Reserved.