
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, May 13, 1990                   TAG: 9005140191
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: F-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

RAIN FOREST

IT'S AN ITEM bound to be picked up by Reader's Digest, the little magazine that comforts its readers by telling them that the world's environmental problems are liberals' fantasies. Brazilian scientists say their country's celebrated rain forest is in much better shape than had been thought.

Agriculture, cattle ranching, logging, road construction, hydroelectric dams, mining and human settlement have taken a toll on the huge forest. The generally accepted figure was that the developed area totaled 598,921 square kilometers, about the size of Kenya. That was an estimate based on projections made from 1978 information from Landsat, a satellite that takes detailed photographs of the planet and beams the data back to Earth.

The Economist of London reports that scientists know a lot more now about interpreting satellite images. The Brazilian Institute for Space Research, checking the 1978 estimates against images received from Landsat in 1988, produced a 196-map volume showing the developed area totals some 251,429 square kilometers. That's only about the size of West Germany.

"Instant trees," The Economist waggishly headlined its story. "Half of the disappearing Brazilian rain forest has come back." Good news, if people know what to do with this knowledge. Bad news if they decide that it means the forest isn't really endangered and that things can go on as normal there.

The forest of the Amazon covers the heartland of South America. It is the habitat for about half the world's species of plants and animals, along with many Indian tribes. Its foliage helps cleanse the lower atmosphere of ozone. This greenery also holds untold quantities of carbon dioxide, which adds to global warming when it's released by cutting trees.

Environmentalists aren't agreed on the best policies to allow reasonable human use of the forest's resources while keeping pristine as much of the area as possible. The new reading of Landsat data buys added time to work on those policies, but not more tomorrows to put it off.

by CNB