The Amazon is the largest rainforest in the world, spanning more than 2 million square miles (5.2 million square kilometers) — an area 12 times the size of California. It influences global water cycles, stores years of global carbon emissions, supports 47 million people, and is home to the greatest concentration of biodiversity on Earth.

But the Amazon rainforest is also disappearing, with 17% of it already cut down or destroyed and largely replaced with agriculture. Other grave threats, such as oil drilling and illegal mining, continue to whittle it down. The next century may have outsize importance, as the forest could reach a "tipping point."

So what will the Amazon rainforest look like in 100 years?

The answer depends on a number of compounding threats, Bernardo Flores, a researcher with the EqualSea Lab at the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain, told Live Science.

Encroaching farmland and organized crime are a couple of the problems chipping away at the Amazon. But those work in tandem with what he considers the three main threats: climate change, which can lead to extreme weather events, "like wetter wet seasons and drier dry seasons," deforestation and fire.

As the Amazon loses more of its forest, it triggers a feedback loop. "You have less rainfall; then you have less forest, [then] less rainfall, less forest," Flores explained. "That ultimately leads to "a global scale feedback involving the Amazon: More forest loss [leads to] more global warming. More global warming, more forest loss."

As forests get drier, it becomes easier for wildfires to burn more areas. Roads also degrade the forest, and "wherever you have roads, you have people doing illegal activities, illegal logging … then this leads to [more] forest fires," Flores said.

The "arc of deforestation" — a roughly 310,000-square-mile (800,000 square km) border along the Amazon considered the largest deforestation frontier in the world — offers a preview of what much of the Amazon could ultimately look like, according to Flores. The forests that remain there have higher tree mortality and more canopy gaps, and they are often "covered with lianas," or woody vines, that become an ecological problem, he said. Lianas compete with trees for light and nutrients in the soil, and significantly reduce not only a tree's chance of survival but also the overall diversity of trees in a forest. "When the whole forest is covered in lianas, you don't see the forest anymore," he added.

Invasive grasses introduced by cattle farmers will likely proliferate in the decades ahead, but "only a few parts" of the Amazon could become "a savanna, because a savanna is a native, biodiverse ecosystem," he said. Invasive grasses "exclude native species, reduce biodiversity" and would not allow native savanna grasses to replace the forest, Flores said. Instead, one possibility is a "degraded open-canopy ecosystem," where native, naturally fire-tolerant trees, combined with invasive grasses, vines and ferns, proliferate, Flores told Live Science.

Wildlife would quickly be affected as well. Aquatic species are especially vulnerable, Flores said. "When you start having these droughts that will simply last for one, two, three years," wetlands will dry out and become flammable, he explained. That could lead to "very quick extinctions in those areas."

The destruction of the Amazon rainforest would be disastrous for the Indigenous people living there, Christian Poirier, program director of Amazon Watch, an environmental and Indigenous rights advocacy group, told Live Science. "Imagine having your backyard bulldozed and your water source poisoned," he said. "You probably need to move from where you live, and that's exactly what's happening in the Amazon."

A devastated Amazon would also lead to "a more chaotic global climate system," Flores said. There could be less rainfall across parts of South America, and global warming will worsen. Earth could eventually reach a tipping point where ice sheets melt, ocean currents malfunction and the collapse of the Amazon accelerate warming all at once, pushing the planet to "cross the tipping point and transition to a much warmer climate," he said, leading to potentially irreversible consequences.

Unlike other major climate risks, such as the potential of the Greenland Ice Sheet melting and contributing to sea level rise, deforestation can in theory be reversed more easily by reforestation, said Arie Staal, an assistant professor of ecosystem resilience at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.

"That gives us a knob to turn that we don't have for other possible tipping points on Earth," he told Live Science. "It is clear that we really need to stop deforestation in the Amazon. And there's hope."

Editor's note: This article was updated at 6:23 p.m. EDT on June 22 to fix the conversion of roughly 310,000 square miles to 800,000 square kilometers.

Rainforest quiz: Can you sort the largest rainforests on Earth?

When you think about ticks, you might picture nightmarish little parasites, stalking you on weekend hikes or afternoons in the park.

Your fear is well-founded. Tick-borne diseases are the most prevalent vector-borne diseases — those transmitted by living organisms — in the United States. Each tick feeds on multiple animals throughout its life, absorbing viruses and bacteria along the way and passing them on with its next bite. Some of those viruses and bacteria are harmful to humans, causing diseases that can be debilitating and sometimes lethal without treatment, such as Lyme, babesiosis and Rocky Mountain spotted fever.

But contained in every bite of this infuriating, insatiable pest is also a trove of social, environmental and epidemiological history.

In many cases, human actions long ago are the reason ticks carry these diseases so widely today. And that’s what makes ticks fascinating for environmental historians like me.

Changing forests fueled tick risks

During the 18th and 19th centuries, settlers cleared more than half the forested land across the northeastern U.S., cutting down forests for timber and to make way for farms, towns and mining operations. With large-scale land clearing came a sharp decline in wildlife of all kinds. Predators such as bears and wolves were driven out, as were deer.

As farming moved westward, Northeasterners began to recognize the ecological and economic value of trees, and they returned millions of acres to forest.

The woods regrew. Plant-eaters such as deer returned, but the apex predators that once kept their populations in check did not.

As a result, deer populations grew rapidly. With the deer came deer ticks (Ixodes scapularis) carrying Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacterium that causes Lyme disease. When a tick feeds on an infected animal, it can take up the bacteria. The tick can pass the bacteria to its next victim. In humans, Lyme disease can cause fever and fatigue, and if left untreated it can affect the nervous system.

The eastern U.S. became a global hot spot for tick-borne Lyme disease starting around the 1970s. Lyme disease affected over 89,000 Americans in 2023, and possibly many more.

Californians move into tick territory

For centuries, changing patterns of human settlements and the politics of land use have shaped the role of ticks and tick-borne illnesses within their environments.

In short, humans have made it easier for ticks to thrive and spread disease in our midst.

In California, the Northern Inner Coast and Santa Cruz mountain ranges that converge on San Francisco from the north and south were never clear-cut, and predators such as mountain lions and coyotes still exist there. But competition for housing has pushed human settlement deeper into wildland areas to the north, south and east of the city, reshaping tick ecology there.

While western black-legged ticks (Ixodes pacificus) tend to swarm in large forest preserves, the Lyme-causing bacterium is actually more prevalent in small, isolated patches of greenery. In these isolated patches, rodents and other tick hosts can thrive, safe from large predators, which need more habitat to move freely. But isolation and lower diversity also means infections are spread more easily within the tick’s host populations.

People tend to build isolated houses in the hills, rather than large, connected developments. As the Silicon Valley area south of San Francisco sprawls outward, this checkerboard pattern of settlement has fragmented the natural landscape, creating a hard-to-manage public health threat.

Fewer hosts, more tightly packed, often means more infected hosts, proportionally, and thus more dangerous ticks.

Six counties across these ranges, all surrounding and including San Francisco, account for 44% of recorded tick-borne illnesses in California.

A lesson from Texas cattle ranches

Domesticated livestock have also shaped the disease threat posed by ticks.

In 1892, at a meeting of cattle ranchers at the Stock Raiser’s Convention in Austin, Texas, Dr. B.A. Rogers introduced a novel theory that ticks were behind recent devastating plagues of Texas cattle fever. The disease had arrived with cattle imported from the West Indies and Mexico in the 1600s, and it was taking huge tolls on cattle herds. But how the disease spread to new victims had been a mystery.

Editors of Daniel’s Texas Medical Journal found the idea of ticks spreading disease laughable and lampooned the hypothesis, publishing a satire of what they described as an “early copy” of a forthcoming report on the subject.

The tick’s “fluid secretion, it is believed, is the poison which causes the fever … [and the tick] having been known to chew tobacco, as all other Texans do, the secretion is most probably tobacco juice,” they wrote.

Fortunately for the ranchers, not to mention the cows, the U.S. Department of Agriculture sided with Rogers. Its cattle fever tick program, started in 1906, curbed cattle fever outbreaks by limiting where and when cattle should cross tick-dense areas.

By 1938, the government had established a quarantine zone that extended 580 miles by 10 miles along the U.S.-Mexico border in South Texas Brush Country, a region favored by the cattle tick.

This innovative use of natural space as a public health tool helped to functionally eradicate cattle fever from 14 Southern states by 1943.

Ticks are products of their environment

When it comes to tick-borne diseases the world over, location matters.

Take the hunter tick (Hyalomma spp.) of the Mediterranean and Asia. As a juvenile, or nymph, these ticks feed on small forest animals such as mice, hares and voles, but as an adult they prefer domesticated livestock.

For centuries, this tick was an occasional nuisance to nomadic shepherds of the Middle East. But in the 1850s, the Ottoman Empire passed laws to force nomadic tribes to become settled farmers instead. Unclaimed lands, especially on the forested edges of the steppe, were offered to settlers, creating ideal conditions for hunter ticks.

As a result, farmers in what today is Turkey saw spikes in tick-borne diseases, including a virus that causes Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, a potentially fatal condition.

It’s probably too much to ask for sympathy for any ticks you meet this summer. They are bloodsucking parasites, after all.

Still, it’s worth remembering that the tick’s malevolence isn’t its own fault. Ticks are products of their environment, and humans have played many roles in turning them into the harmful parasites that seek us out today.

This edited article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Amazon could be racing closer to a calamitous tipping point that would transform the lush rainforest into a drier savanna within a century, researchers warn.

This massive shift could be triggered by a combination of climate change and deforestation.

The Amazon rainforest is the largest tropical rainforest in the world, covering more than 2.3 million square miles (6 million square kilometers) and harboring 10% of the world's plant and animal species. The World Wide Fund estimates that the Amazon contains 99 billion to 154 billion tons (90 billion to 140 billion metric tons) of carbon and receives more than 70 inches (180 centimeters) of rain each year, on average. As such, it forms a key component of the global water and carbon cycles, which regulate the climate.

In the past century, rainforests like the Amazon have become increasingly vulnerable to stressors such as droughts and wildfires, driven by recent climate change and widespread deforestation. The World Resources Institute's Global Forest Review estimates that the Brazilian Amazon lost 11,000 square miles (28,000 square km) of forest — an area roughly the size of Massachusetts — in 2024 alone.

Some scientists think these changes are pushing the Amazon toward a "tipping point" where the lush rainforest could transform into drier grassland. But other researchers disagree.

In a new study published Aug. 1 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, scientists revisited the Amazon's uncertain future. "We are reasonably confident that such a shift is possible," said study co-author Andrew Friend, a professor of Earth systems science at the University of Cambridge. "The question is what degree of climate change and/or deforestation will cause the system to change," Friend told Live Science in an email.

Related: What are the largest rainforests in the world?

Using a computer model, the team tested how the Amazon rainforest would respond to the combined effects of climate change and deforestation. They used what's known as a "single-column model," which in this case only simulated one average location within the Amazon basin to represent the entire area into which the Amazon River and its tributaries drain.

This type of model captures some of the complexities of a 3D global climate model, but it doesn't take into account how moisture and rainfall might change across different regions of the basin.

Based on the model's results, the researchers identified three tipping points in the Amazon system: a 65% decrease in forest cover, a 10% decrease in moisture coming from the Atlantic Ocean, or a 6% decrease in rainfall. Beyond these thresholds, small changes in either the region's climate or forest cover could push the forest over the edge, transforming the ecosystem into a grassland.

The crux of this shift is a feedback loop between the land, vegetation and moisture in the atmosphere. Trees take up water from the soil through their roots and release water vapor into the atmosphere through their leaves, via evaporation and transpiration. That water vapor condenses in the atmosphere to form rain. Rainwater infiltrates the soil, where trees can access it. And so the cycle continues.

Friend explained that with fewer trees, there's less evapotranspiration and rainfall, which dries out the forest and eventually turns it into a savanna. "This change can be caused by deforestation, but climate change can also cause it, which changes the total amount of water entering the basin from the Atlantic Ocean," he said.

The team acknowledged that one limitation of their model was its inability to resolve spatial differences across the basin because it focused on only one spot.

Chris Boulton, a climate scientist at the University of Exeter who led a previous tipping point study, agreed. Boulton told Live Science in an email that it's extremely important to factor in where deforestation occurs. "Deforesting areas close to the Atlantic can prevent evapotranspiration near the edge of the forest, and less water finds its way into the deeper parts," he said.

So, what can be done about it? The authors said that urgent action is needed. They indicated that even at the lower end of predicted climate-change scenarios, continued deforestation could decimate the Amazon rainforest within the next 100 years.

"Both climate change and deforestation have to be reduced over the next 10-20 years if we want to be confident that the system will remain intact," Friend said. "Our understanding is far from complete, and we may be wrong about how the system will respond to these threats, but it would be unwise to rely on this possibility."

Gold mining is literally sucking the Amazon rainforest dry, creating an environment where trees cannot grow, according to a new study.

Researchers found that suction mining not only degrades the soil, it also drains moisture and traps heat, creating extreme conditions where even seedlings cannot survive.

"It's like trying to grow a tree in an oven," study co-author Josh West, a professor of Earth sciences and environmental studies at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, said in a statement.

Throughout the Amazon, gold mining accounts for nearly 10% of deforestation, and it's increasing significantly. The amount of land in the Amazon used for mining gold has doubled since 2018 following a sharp increase in the price of the precious metal, according to the Amazon Mining Watch. In 2023, an estimated 5,000 square miles (13,000 square kilometers) was being mined for gold.

The impact on the landscape is devastating, with ground temperatures reaching 145 degrees Fahrenheit (60 degrees Celsius) and several meters of dry sand, natural regeneration of the land is nearly impossible, except in areas near water sources.

In a study published Monday (June 2) in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, researchers were looking to find out why trees fail to regrow on land that has been mined for gold.

Related: Tropical rainforests could get too hot for photosynthesis and die if climate crisis continues, scientists warn

The scientists studied two abandoned mining sites in the Madre de Dios region of southeastern Peru.

This mining practice used at the sites, run primarily by small-scale ventures, uses a dredge that requires large volumes of water to suction sediment and sand from river and stream beds in search of gold particles.

The effect of "water cannons," as lead author Abra Atwood, a researcher at the Woodwell Climate Research Center, describes them, is that they wash away the clay- and nutrient-rich topsoil. The landscape is transformed into dry ponds, some as large as soccer fields, surrounded by mounds of sand up to 22 feet ( 7 meters) high.

The team used remote sensing methods; electrical resistivity analysis, a technique that measures how easily moisture moves through soil; soil property measurements; and thermal imaging cameras to assess the impact of mining on the land.

They discovered that mining waste acts like a sieve, allowing water to seep through much faster than in primary forest soils (nearly 50 feet (15 m) per day compared to just 0.2 feet (0.074 m) per day in the forest). This leaves the soil with less moisture and more heat, exacerbated by the lack of shade due to deforestation, making it virtually impossible for new roots to take hold. Replanted seedlings "simply die," Atwood told Live Science.

However, areas near the edges of the dry ponds and in low-lying zones have higher soil moisture, lower temperatures, and therefore better natural regeneration.

To gauge the magnitude of this problem, the team found that between 1980 and 2017, small-scale mining destroyed more than 367 square miles (950 square km)) of rainforest in this territory — an area more than seven times the size of San Francisco — and operations continue to grow, putting biodiversity and Indigenous territories at risk. "The current landscape in the suction mining areas where we worked provides very little in terms of ecosystem services beyond gold mining. Habitat loss will also deeply impact long-term biodiversity," Atwood said.

In response, the researchers propose specific recommendations for redesigning the landscape and improving water retention in the affected areas. The first step would be to fill the mining ponds to restore flat terrain. This would bring tree roots closer to groundwater, increase moisture retention, and stimulate plant regeneration. Then, the topsoil should be restored.

However, Atwood cautioned that these actions face significant financial, logistical, and even political challenges. Illegal gold mining impacts many Amazonian regions, including Peru, Brazil, Suriname and Guyana.

"Our message is to focus efforts on natural water sources to give reforestation initiatives the greatest chance of survival," she noted. "To address a large-scale problem, you need a large-scale solution, even if the financial costs are high."

"There's only one Amazon rainforest," West said in the statement. "It's a living system unlike anything else on Earth. If we lose it, we lose something irreplaceable."

This striking astronaut photo shows the intense color and intricate shape of Madagascar's Betsiboka River as it meanders through an archipelago of mangrove islands that have helped to stabilize and reshape the waterway as destructive human practices push it to the brink of collapse. 

The Betsiboka stretches around 326 miles (525 kilometers) from one of Madagascar's central highlands to Bombetoka Bay on the island nation's northwest coast. As it approaches the sea, the river splits apart, forming a network of braided waterways, known as a delta, as the discolored water is diverted around a series of small islands.

These lemon-shaped islands are made of sediment held together by the deep intertangled roots of mangrove trees. Some of the larger islands have visible erosion features near their center where water has trickled through the stubborn trees, according to NASA's Earth Observatory. Without the roots, the islands would be quickly washed away by the river, which could destabilize the surrounding ecosystem.

The Betsiboka delta is often referred to locally as the "red lands" due to the dark orange hues of the flowing water. This striking color is the result of heavy staining from soil rich in rust-like iron oxides, known as laterite, according to NASA's Earth Observatory. 

Related: 12 amazing images of Earth from space

The color of the Betsiboka naturally intensifies when heavy rains from tropical storms wash more laterite from the surrounding land, according to Europe's Copernicus program. However, human activity is also changing the river. 

Since 1950, around 40% of Madagascar's forest cover has been destroyed by wildfires, agricultural grazing and "slash and burn" clearances, according to NASA's Earth Observatory. As a result, the Betsiboka now runs across more unstable ground, making it easier for more sediment to be swept away by the river. 

 A 2010 study using 30 years of Landsat satellite data between 1973 and 2003 showed that this increased erosion has made the river significantly darker.   

The loss of forests has also increased the flow rate of the river because rainwater more easily drains into the waterway, which is putting more strain on the mangrove islands in the delta.

The changes to the Betsiboka are affecting local people who rely on the river for drinking water, bathing, laundry and agriculture, according to Madagascan news site Mada Magazine. 

The first ever images of the Vangunu giant rat, an elusive rodent that can grow up to 1.5 feet long and is known from only a single specimen that fell out of a tree six years ago, have been recorded by researchers in the Solomon Islands.

Using camera traps and a particularly tasty lure, the team snapped pictures of four rodents at least twice the size of common rats scurrying around the forest floor on the Solomon Islands, an archipelago northeast of Australia in the Pacific Ocean. 

The rodents were "irrefutably identified" as Vangunu giant rats (Uromys vika) owing to their large size, long tails and very short ears, according to a study published Nov. 20 in the journal Ecology and Evolution.

"Capturing images of the Vangunu giant rat for the first time is extremely positive news for this poorly known species," study lead author Tyrone Lavery, a lecturer of native vertebrate biology at the University of Melbourne in Australia, said in a statement.

Indigenous people living on Vangunu, an island that sits in the center of Solomon Islands, have long known that rats so big they can chew through coconuts live in their forest — but the species had eluded scientists. The first tangible proof of its existence came in 2017, when commercial loggers felled a tree on Vangunu and a giant rat dropped out of it dead.

Related: Can rats 'imagine'? Rodents show signs of imagination while playing VR games

A few years later, locals from the Zaira community, who manage the largest remaining tract of Vangunu's pristine forest and hold intimate knowledge of its ecology, helped the same researchers set up their camera traps to finally document the secretive rodents in their habitat.

"All images were captured during nocturnal hours, and activity was clustered around midnight," the researchers wrote in the study. They lured the giant rats with sesame oil, which may have been key to their success, they added, as previous attempts using peanut butter only attracted non-native black rats (Rattus rattus).

The pictures come "at a critical juncture," Lavery said. Vungunu giant rats could soon go extinct due to commercial logging, which has decimated much of the island's forest — including the area where the first giant rat specimen was found in 2017, according to the study.

Last year, the Solomon Islands' government granted consent for commercial logging of the last scraps of forest where the already critically endangered rats live. "Logging consent has been granted at Zaira, and if it proceeds it will undoubtedly lead to extinction of the Vangunu giant rat," Lavery said.

Zaira community representatives have lodged an appeal against the decision.

"We hope that these images of U. vika will support efforts to prevent the extinction of this threatened species," Lavery said. 

Climate change could be gradually making the world's tropical rainforests too hot for photosynthesis to occur, and it may eventually trigger their collapse, a new study has warned. 

Using data collected from the International Space Station (ISS), scientists found that a small yet growing percentage of tree leaves in tropical forests are approaching the maximum temperature threshold for leaves to photosynthesize. 

The average critical temperature beyond which photosynthetic machinery in tropical trees begins to fail is 116 degrees Fahrenheit (46.7 degrees Celsius). Currently, only 0.01 % of all leaves surpass this critical temperature every year. But scientists warn that air temperature rises of 7.2 F (4 C) could push trees in tropical forests beyond a tipping point and into mass death. 

Related: Amazon nears 'tipping point' where rainforest could transform into savanna

If this were to happen, it would spell disaster for Earth's climate systems and biodiversity, researchers report in a study published Wednesday (Aug. 23) in the journal Nature.

"It's concerning from our perspective that you see nonlinear trends. So you heat the air by, let's say, 2, 3 degrees Celsius [3.6 to 5.4 F], and the actual upper temperature of these leaves goes up by 8 degrees [Celsius; 14.4 F]," Christopher Doughty, an associate professor of ecoinformatics at Northern Arizona University, said during a press conference on Monday (Aug. 21). "Even though a small percentage of leaves are currently doing this, our best guess is that a 4 degrees Celsius increase in temperature could cause some serious issues for certain tropical forests."

How to take a rainforest's temperature

Tropical rainforests are vital regions for our planet. They encompass 3 billion acres (1.2 billion hectares), or around 6%, of Earth's surface area, and are home to half of the world's animal and plant species. They are also vital stores of the world's fresh water — with the Amazon Basin alone storing one-fifth. Photosynthesis in rainforests produces 32% of the planet's oxygen and helps stabilize global climates by sucking billions of tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year.

To build up a picture of the temperatures in the world's tropical forests, the researchers turned to the Ecosystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station (ECOSTRESS) sensor on the ISS.

The scientists combined ECOSTRESS temperature readings from 2018 to 2020 with thousands of ground measurements made from infrared-sensing pyrgeometers in rainforests across South America, Central Africa and Southeast Asia.

Aggregating these results revealed that canopy temperatures peaked at around 93.2 F (34 C) on average, and a small proportion exceeded 104 F (40 C). Moreover, every season, 0.01% of leaves exceeded a critical temperature beyond which their photosynthesis is likely to shut down, resulting in their deaths.

This number may sound inconsequential, but the researchers noted it could increase rapidly. "While the number is small it has large implications — it's not going to go 0.01 to 0.02. It's going to jump nonlinearly, it's going to increase potentially much faster," Joshua B. Fisher, an associate professor of environmental science at Chapman University in California said at the press conference.

By performing laboratory leaf experiments at 3.6, 5.4 and 7.2 F (2, 3 and 4 C) of warming, the researchers found that temperatures around some of the leaves peaked much higher than the air temperature — by up to 14.4 F (8 C).

Plugging these peak temperatures into a mathematical model, the scientists found that an average 7 F (3.9 C) increase in the air temperature surrounding the leaves caused those most exposed to the heat to have their water-carrying stomata closed off by the tree, leading to their deaths. This triggered a cascade effect, increasing the temperature around the remaining leaves and potentially killing them, their branches and the trees in turn.

"If you have 10% of the leaves dying, the whole branch is going to be warmer because a critical part of that branch can no longer cool the broader branch. Likewise you can make that assumption across the whole forest when a tree dies," Doughty said.

Yet in spite of their findings, the scientists are optimistic that humanity has enough time to curb emissions and avoid potential tipping points in tropical forests.

"This is a glimpse into a potential tipping point. It is not saying that the tropical forests are now going to be savannas tomorrow," Fisher said. "If you think about human health, you want to know if you're sick or have cancer so you can deal with it before it takes over."

Conservationists have released new photos of the only known living albino giant anteater on Earth, who is now believed to be at least 1 year old.

Researchers from the Anteaters and Highways Project (AHP), a multi-year assessment of anteater-vehicle collisions set up by Brazil's Wild Animal Conservation Institute (ICAS), first discovered the anteater in December 2022 on a ranch in Brazil's Mato Grosso do Sul state. They named the unique animal Alvin.

Alvin was spotted clinging to his typically colored mother's back, a behavior seen in all young giant anteaters (Myrmecophaga tridactyla) below 10 months old. The team captured the snowy juvenile and fitted him with a GPS vest to track his future movements, AHP representatives wrote in a statement supplied to Live Science.

On May 10, AHP posted new images of Alvin on Facebook. The white anteater is now 4.9 feet (1.5 meters) long and weighs 31 pounds (14 kilograms), which suggests he is over 1 year old and not far from being fully grown, AHP representatives wrote on Facebook. Alvin was also given his second GPS vest after outgrowing his first one.

Albinism is a genetic condition that prevents animals from producing melanin, the pigment that gives color to their skin, fur, feathers, scales and eyes. As a result, individuals with albinism appear completely white and have pink eyes. Their eyes and skin are very sensitive to light, which can cause impaired vision and make individuals more susceptible to sunburn. Albinism is a recessive trait, meaning that both parents must carry a copy of the gene.

Related: Zoo anteater exposed people to rabies in first-of-its-kind case 

The main threat to most albino animals is a higher risk of predation because their discoloration often makes them stand out from their environment. And this seems to be the case with giant anteaters.

In August 2021, AHP researchers found the corpse of another juvenile male albino giant anteater, the first of its kind ever discovered, in the same area as Alvin. The body showed signs of predation. 

"When we got there, he was already dead, but we were able to collect genetic samples that were sent to the lab for analysis," Dr. Débora Yogui, a veterinarian with the AHP team, said in the statement. By comparing the DNA collected from the first albino with Alvin's DNA, the team will be able to tell if the animals are related, she added. 

If Alvin and the deceased albino are not directly related, it could suggest that the species gene pool has been decreased by inbreeding, which would explain why this rare condition has started appearing, AHP representatives wrote. 

The researchers suspect that inbreeding is likely due to the destruction of the animals' natural habitat by human deforestation. Giant anteaters are currently listed as Vulnerable on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List.

The team is also concerned that, even if Alvin survives future predation, he may be impacted by overexposure to sunlight. Anteaters try to spend the hottest hours of the day in the shade because the land-dwelling mammals are poorly suited to dealing with extreme heat. But deforestation has robbed anteaters of this much-needed shade, which poses a particular problem to Alvin because of his sensitive skin.

The AHP researchers will continue to track and monitor Alvin's progress as he gets older. But they also warned that they will not step in to save Alvin if he falls ill or is attacked by predators.

"Even though we know that it runs several risks, we cannot interfere in the life of this animal directly, because we would be influencing natural ecological processes," Nina Attias, a wildlife biologist with ICAS, said in the statement. "As conservationists, we know that this is not good for the species or the environment."

As climate change transforms our world, the impacts will be felt unequally, with some animals struggling to survive and others finding ways to overcome the resulting challenges.

This phenomenon is increasingly described as the "winners and losers under climate change," said Giovanni Strona, an ecologist and former associate professor at the University of Helsinki, now a researcher at the European Commission. Strona led a 2022 study, published in the journal Science Advances, that found that under an intermediate emissions scenario, we stand to lose, on average across the globe, almost 20% of vertebrate biodiversity by the century's end. Under a worst-case warming scenario, that loss rises to almost 30%.

So which animals are the "winners," and how well will they really fare under increasing temperatures, drought and habitat loss?

Related: When did scientists first warn humanity about climate change?

Everything is connected

There's no doubt about the threats to Earth's biodiversity from climate change and habitat destruction. In 2022, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) released the Living Planet Report, which described a 69% decline in the relative abundance of monitored species since 1970. Meanwhile, 1 million species now face extinction across our planet because of these twin threats, according to the report. There's now mounting evidence that Earth is experiencing its sixth mass extinction.

Climate change contributes to these extinction risks in complex and interconnected ways, some of which are still-unknown. It will affect populations directly by inducing extreme weather events, like storms; by driving up temperatures or reducing rainfall beyond the thresholds a species needs to survive; and by shrinking key habitats on which animals depend. 

As Strona's research showed, climate change can also have indirect effects that ripple through an ecosystem. He and his team built several model Earths incorporating over 15,000 food webs to represent the connections of many thousand terrestrial vertebrate species. Then, they simulated various climate and land-use change scenarios in these ecosystems. 

Their simulations showed that when climate change directly caused the loss of one species, it resulted in a cascading loss of several species that depend on that one species for food, pollination or other ecosystem services. This domino-like effect, known as "co-extinction," will drive the bulk of terrestrial vertebrate species diversity declines under projected climate change, the research predicts. Because the study didn't model the impact of climate change on communities of insects or plants, these findings are likely also optimistic, Strona said.

The huge complexity of animal relationships within natural ecosystems, plus the uncertainty over how extreme climate change will get, makes it difficult to drill down into such data and pinpoint which animals will do better than others as our world warms. However, Strona's research did pick up on a general trend: "What we found is that larger species and species at high trophic [food chain] levels will be more adversely affected," he told Live Science.

So animals with lower positions in the food chain, such as insects or rodents, may fare better in a warming world.

Related: What would happen to Earth if humans went extinct?

Adaptable animals

Larger species tend to reproduce more slowly, and that's another clue researchers have connected to climate vulnerability.

Another recent study, published in the journal Global Change Biology, looked at 461 animal species across six continents and analyzed the disruptive effects of historical land-use and temperature changes on their populations. "What we found in our study is that species that breed really fast are really good at exploiting new habitats — taking energy and transforming it into offspring," study lead author Gonzalo Albaladejo Robles, a conservation biologist at University College London, told Live Science. 

Faster breeding may benefit species in a changing climate because they're more adaptable to changing habitats; fast breeding cycles give these species an "opportunity to survive these peaks in environmental disruption," such as extreme weather or habitat loss, Albaladejo Robles explained. Meanwhile, slower-breeding animals showed the opposite trend in the study, and their populations declined when temperature and habitat changed.

Size is a factor that may also work against species. For instance, bigger animals might struggle more under climate change because they typically need larger stretches of uninterrupted habitat, as well as more food, which is easily threatened by habitat loss and the landscape and resource impacts of climate change, Albaladejo Robles said. 

"If you're an elephant, it's more likely that you're going to be sensitive to severe droughts, and also deforestation, than other smaller species that need less resources," Albaladejo Robles said. "Generally speaking, small species are going to be more likely to survive human-change interactions, like climate change and land use change." 

Species with more niche diets, such as pandas and koalas, may be at increased risk under environmental change, too. By contrast, the broad diets of generalist feeders, such as crows and raccoons, give them a wide range of foods to fall back on if one food source disappears. 

The ability to migrate and adapt to different habitats could also insure animals against an uncertain future. For instance, many creatures that can survive only at frozen latitudes or in coral reefs, which will dwindle under continued warming, face greater risks. Research has also unearthed evidence that animals such as parrots, bats and shrews are "shape-shifting" over generations, developing bigger beaks, wings and tails to help them cool down more effectively in warmer climates, and possibly making them more adaptable.

All this suggests that animals that are more resilient to habitat disruption and temperature changes are most likely to thrive in a warmer world. For clues to which species that future might include, just look to the unfussy, generalist, fast-breeding species that occupy the most disrupted habitats on our planet: cities. Those include cockroaches, mice, rats, crows, pigeons, some raptors, monkeys and raccoons. 

Related: Could climate change make humans go extinct?

And that's assuming we don't end up with catastrophic levels of heat that stretch beyond the thermal limits of those species. If that scenario were to unfold, we'd be looking at a world populated by extremophiles like tardigrades, also known as water bears. These tiny creatures can go into a state of hibernation that almost completely shuts down their metabolism, enabling some tardigrade species to weather extreme cold of minus 320 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 196 degrees Celsius), and heat of up to 300 degrees Fahrenheit (150 degrees Celsius).

And yet, even their seemingly indestructible bodies have limits, according to some of Strona's previous research. This study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, simulated how tardigrades would fare under extreme cold and warming based on their temperature-tolerance levels alone. The research confirmed that the tardigrades could withstand incredible extremes. But when the researchers factored in the other species interactions that make up the ecosystems on which they depend, tardigrade populations plummeted under projected extreme warming that would decimate these other animals.

"Tardigrades are super resistant by themselves, but they need the other species to survive," Strona said.

That is the flaw in the idea of "survivor species," he said, because it misses the need for whole ecosystems and their web of complex species interactions to sustain life on Earth, as the Science Advances research showed.

Instead of resting our hopes on some resilient species to survive under climate change, we need to protect whole ecosystems. That means slowing warming by curtailing fossil fuel consumption, limiting habitat destruction and reducing other human impacts on wildlife, experts say. 

Projections can help by shining a spotlight on the most vulnerable animals that need our immediate attention. Even better, paired with the likes of recent research that identifies projected habitat refuges for climate-threatened animals, we can proactively protect whole ecosystems that keep species interconnected. 

There may be short-term "winners" under projected climate change. "But what matters, I think, is the net balance," Strona said. "My perception is that there will be much more losers than winners" — and ultimately, those losers could include us, he said.

Humans are destroying forests all over the world in a process called deforestation. Forests are cleared to make space for agriculture, and so humans can use the wood to make paper and other products. Deforestation is a very destructive process that threatens the health of our planet and its inhabitants.

Forests cover almost one-third of the planet's land, according to the World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF). Countless plants, animals, fungi and microbes live in forests, so when these forests are destroyed, the wildlife can't survive. The same is true for many human communities living in forests, particularly Indigenous people.

Deforestation is a problem almost everywhere, but it's especially damaging in the tropics. Rainforests in these regions cover just 2% of Earth's total surface area and yet house half of the world's plant and animal species.

What is deforestation?

Deforestation is the clearing of forests. Most deforestation takes place in the tropics, where beef farming is by far the biggest reason forests are cleared, according to WWF. People destroy trees in these regions so the land can be used to raise cattle to eat. The second biggest driver of deforestation is the demand for soybean, which is a crop grown to feed farm animals and to make biofuels, according to Our World In Data.

Forests are also cleared to make space for palm oil plantations, particularly in Indonesia. Palm oil is an edible vegetable oil that's found in half of all supermarket products. Behind palm oil, the fourth biggest driver of deforestation is the demand for paper and other products made from wood.

When did deforestation start?

Humans have been clearing trees for thousands of years, even before we started farming around 10,000 years ago, according to the book Biological and Environmental Hazards, Risks, and Disasters (Elsevier, 2023). However, deforestation has gotten worse over time. About half of the total deforestation caused by humans happened between 8,000 B.C. and 1900, while the other half has happened since 1900.

Global forest loss has slowed down a bit since the 1980s, when the rate of deforestation peaked, according to Our World In Data. However, deforestation is still very high across the world. There are also other factors affecting the health of our forests. For example, Australian rainforests have been dying much faster since the 1980s, with trees living about half as long, likely because of climate change.

What are the impacts of deforestation?

Deforestation is a major threat to humans, wildlife and the planet. Forests support most of the wildlife that lives on land, as well as human communities around the world, particularly Indigenous people and communities living in forests — an estimated 780 million people live within 0.6 miles (1 km) of a forest. Forests provide shelter, food, water, medicine, work and fuel to these communities, so deforestation is a major threat to their existence.

Deforestation can also directly influence the weather. For example, removing trees in tropical regions can reduce rainfall because it changes the way water vapor forms over the forest canopy. Healthy forests help minimize extreme weather by regulating rainfall and stabilizing local climates, according to the United Nations' 2024 State of the World's Forests report. Researchers have found that in North America, Europe and Asia, deforestation leads to more intense heatwaves, according to MIT's Climate Portal.

Does deforestation contribute to global warming?

Deforestation contributes to global warming in a variety of different ways. Global warming, or climate change, is caused by humans releasing greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Forests naturally pull billions of tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, so when we remove them, we lose one of the ways Earth captures and stores that greenhouse gas. Destroying trees also releases the carbon dioxide they've stored back into the atmosphere.

Deforestation is the main way humans change our planet's landscape, and it produces up to 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics. Damaging forests can also cause them to produce more carbon than they capture.

Deforestation in the Amazon

South America's Amazon rainforest is the largest forest in the world, but it's under threat from deforestation. Humans have removed about 386,000 square miles (1 million square km) of the Amazon rainforest since 1978, as the amount of tree cover has declined by at least 17% over the last 50 years.

One of the biggest drivers of deforestation in the Amazon is industrial farming. Setting fire to the forest is one of the main ways humans get rid of trees. Burning trees also makes the forest hotter and drier, which makes it more flammable, so additional fires do more damage.

How to stop deforestation

Deforestation is a global problem that will require a variety of different solutions, such as better monitoring of industries destroying forests and encouraging sustainable farming practices. According to the 2024 State of the World's Forests report, innovation is required to scale up forest conservation. The report pointed to new technologies for gathering data on forests and developing locally led solutions with underrepresented groups such as women, young people and Indigenous peoples.

At COP26 in 2021, more than 100 world leaders pledged to end deforestation by 2030. The rate of deforestation is currently too high to meet the 2030 pledge, with every region off target, according to the Forest Declaration Assessment, which tracks world leaders' progress against the COP26 target.

Humans can restore forests they've damaged to help counter deforestation. The goal of forest restoration is to return the forest to its original state before it was cleared, according to the U.S. Forest Service. Restoring damaged forests can be as easy as leaving them alone and allowing them to grow back. However, humans usually need to assist in some way, such as by planting new trees of the same type that were lost.

Deforestation photos

More than 100 world leaders have agreed to a commitment to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030, in the first major deal of the 2021 U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland. 

The commitment, called the Glasgow Leaders' Declaration on Forest and Land Use encompasses 85% of the world's forests and offers $19.2 billion in public and private funding to end both the legal and illegal destruction of forestland. 

Leaders such as President Joe Biden, China's Xi Jinping and Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro have signed on to the deal. But the signatories have not yet determined how the commitment will be enforced, leaving scientists to warn that previous legally nonbinding deforestation deals — such as the 2014 New York Declaration on Forests, which pledged to halve deforestation by 2020 and end it by 2030 — failed to meet their objectives.

Related: The world has a serious deforestation problem. These 7 images prove it.

"It is good news to have a political commitment to end deforestation from so many countries and significant funding to move forward on that journey," Simon Lewis, a professor of global change science at University College London, told the BBC. But he added that the world "has been here before" with the 2014 declaration, "which failed to slow deforestation at all." 

Jo Blackman, head of forests policy and advocacy at environmental human rights NGO Global Witness, said that while the pledge's list of signatories is "impressive," it risks reiterating past failed commitments if it "lacked teeth" in the form of legal commitments.

In addition to being crucial ecosystems, forests absorb and store carbon dioxide — which makes up around 80% of the greenhouse gases that drive climate change. Deforestation and land clearing account for 23% of global human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, according to a 2019 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. 

The main drivers of land clearing are pasture for cattle (41%), commercial cropland to grow palm oil and soy (18%) and logging for paper and wood (13%), according to a 2019 study published in the journal Global Environmental Change.

Satellite data compiled by Global Forest Watch shows that one-third of the tropical deforestation that occurred in 2019 happened in Brazil. In fact, Brazil and Indonesia accounted for 52% of the 20,850 square miles (54,000 square kilometers) of lost forestland globally.

At the COP26 news conference, Bolsonaro said his government was committed to "eliminating illegal deforestation by 2030."

In fact, many of the Bolsonaro regime’s actions have actually made it easier to seize, cut and clear rainforest via legal means, according to Human Rights Watch. And the Amazon is already on the brink. A July 2021 study showed that the Amazon has switched from producing more carbon than it absorbs, Live Science previously reported. Another study, published in October 2020, showed that as much as 40% of the Amazon rainforest could be at a tipping point where it could transform into savanna.

Although there may be challenges ahead, reforestation successes aren't unprecedented and can be achieved. Despite the losses to precious tropical rainforest, one study using NASA satellites shows that in recent decades the world has become a visibly greener place. This is due, in large part, to efforts by China and India, which account for one-third of Earth's greening over the past 20 years; 42% of China's greening is made up of the planting of new forests and expanding old ones through programs that aim to mitigate air pollution, land degradation and climate change.

Of the pledge's new funding, $1.7 billion will be used to support Indigenous communities in protecting rainforests by securing their rights to land. According to Global Witness, of the record 227 people killed while protecting ecosystems in 2020, one-third belonged to indigenous communities.

Originally published on Live Science.

In January 2021, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) released a report about the state of the world's deforestation problem and 24 "deforestation fronts," or places where large areas of forest are under threat. The study concluded that 106 million acres (43 million hectares) of forest around the world have been stripped away over the last 13 years. 

"Nature is in freefall and our climate is changing dangerously — protecting precious forests like the Amazon is a vital part of the solution to this global crisis," Tanya Steele, chief executive officer at WWF, said in a statement. Earth's forests are our planet's lungs, inhaling atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) and expelling breathable oxygen. This ability to absorb CO2 means that forests act as carbon sinks and store CO2 from the atmosphere, reducing the negative impact the greenhouse gas can have on global warming. Since the 1960s, Earth's CO2 sinks have absorbed around 25% of the CO2 emissions from fossil fuels, according to the BBC. For example, the Amazon rainforest stores around 1.1 to 1.3 tons (1 to 1.2 billion metric tonnes) each year, according to the BBC. of CO2, according to WWF 

However, thanks to growing global populations and an increase in demand for resources, such as fuel, food and land, deforestation is wreaking havoc on forests around the world. For example, 30 million acres (12 million hectares) of tropical tree cover was lost in 2020 alone, according to research by the University of Maryland.

Here are just a handful of these "deforestation fronts" to show the stark realization of deforestation around the world. 

1. Papua, Indonesia 

Indonesia accounts for only 1% of Earth's land surface, but the rainforests that cover the country's 18,000 islands are home to 10% of our planet's plant species, according to NASA. However  between 2001 and 2020, Papua, also known as Western New Guinea, has lost around 1.7 million acres (666,000 hectares) of tree cover, which is equivalent to around 546 million tons (495 million metric tons) of CO2 emissions, according to Global Forest Watch. The images above show the vast forest clearing around the Indonesian Digul River; Earth-observing satellites Landsat 5 and Landsat 8 snapped the images on Nov. 20, 2002 and Nov. 27, 2019. 

2. Borneo, Indonesia 

Palm tree plantations represent one of the biggest threats to the Heart of Borneo — the main part of the Indonesian island where forests are still intact, covering an area the size of Utah. As a cheap source of oil for food and fuel, palm oil is a hot commodity in Indonesia; however, palm oil has also led to the loss of at least 39% of Borneo’s tree cover, according to Reuters. 

More than 90% of the global palm oil production occurs in Malaysia and Indonesia, according to the WWF. As a result, countless trees have been cut down to make way for palm plantations; as those trees have fallen, the resident wildlife populations have also suffered. Of course, human activity isn't the only threat to Indonesian forests. As global temperatures continue to increase, the occurrence of wildfires seems to be following suit, according to the Climate Science Special Report: Fourth National Climate Assessment, Volume I . In 2019, wildfires blazed through 3,311 square miles (8,575 square  km) of the Borneo jungle, releasing around 690 million tons (626 million metric tons) of carbon dioxide between August and October, according to CNN. 

3. The Gran Chaco, Argentina 

The Gran Chaco is South America's second-largest forest and is a hotspot for wildlife, providing habitat for about 3,400 species of plants, 500 species of birds and around 150 species of mammals, according to WWF. The Gran Chaco, which spans around 250,000 square miles (650,00 square km), has been subject to years of deforestation for agricultural development. Between 2010 and 2018, 11,000 square miles (29,000 square km) of forest were converted to soybean farmlands and livestock ranches, according to NASA. The image above shows a portion of the forest in the Salta Province of northern Argentina that has been stripped away and replaced with fields. 

4. South America - Peru 

Over the past 20 years, the Peruvian Amazon rainforest has been one of the most affected areas in the world by deforestation, according to the WWF. In 2015, 1,100 square miles (around 2,800 square km) of Peru’s forests were cut down each year, with around 80% of deforestation caused by illegal logging, according to the WWF. One region of Peru, called the Madre de Dios, has seen vast losses of the forest thanks to illegal gold mining. Between 2001 and 2020, the Madre de Dios region lost around 672,000 acres (272,000 hectares) of tree cover, according to the Institute of Engineering and Technology. 

5. Amazon, Bolivia 

Since 2000, Bolivia has lost 9.5% of its tree cover. This is equivalent to around 15 million acres (6.1 million hectares) and 2.6 gigatons of CO2 emissions, according to Global Forest Watch. In Santa Cruz, the largest of the nine constituent departments of Bolivia, vast areas of tropical dry forest have been cleared for agricultural use. This composite image was created by combining three images taken by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite throughout 2019 and shows the Bolivian lowlands that have been transformed into farming communities since the 1980s, according to NASA. Each of these radial fields is around 8 square miles (20 square km) in size, with a small settlement, including a church, school and soccer field at the center of each. 

6. Amazon - Brazil 

The Amazon rainforest is the largest rainforest on Earth and home to 10% of all plant and animal species. The rainforest is a part of the Amazon Biome, an area that spans around 3 million square miles (6.7 million square km) and crosses eight countries, according to WWF. Over the past 40 years, more than 18% of the Amazon rainforest found in Brazil has been lost — equal to the size of California — because of logging and agriculture, according to Greenpeace.   

The images above show the amount of deforestation between 2000 and 2019 around a portion of one of Brazil's major highways, called the BR-163, according to NASA. The highway, which is over 1,000 miles (1,700km) long,  links soy-growing areas in the southern Amazon rainforest with ports at the river's end, according to WWF.

7. East Africa, Madagascar 

Forests throughout eastern Madagascar have been subjected to deforestation to make way for agricultural development for many years, according to research published in the journal Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment Since 2000, the nation has lost 24% of its tree coverage, according to Global Forest Watch. One of the major causes of deforestation in Madagascar is "slash and burn" agriculture, also known as swidden. This method of deforestation involves cutting down extensive areas of forests and burning the fallen trees. Its purpose is to incorporate the biomass of the trees into the soil, thus increasing the soil’s fertility for the benefit of agricultural crops, according to the Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics. 

An extremely rare species of bee that hasn't been seen for nearly a century and was thought to be extinct has been rediscovered by a lone researcher in Australia.

This rare "masked" bee, known as Pharohylaeus lactiferus, is native to Australia and is the only species in the genus Pharohylaeus. It is similar in size to the invasive European honeybee (Apis mellifera). Only six individuals have been previously identified in Australia and the last one was reported in 1923. 

But the bee was recently rediscovered by James Dorey, a doctoral candidate at Flinders University, while completing fieldwork in the state of Queensland. After the chance rediscovery, Dorey conducted a larger survey of Queensland and New South Wales dedicated to searching for P. lactiferus.

Related: Gorgeous images of Australian 'rainbow' bees will blow your mind

"I never really expected to find any," Dorey told Live Science. "But we have caught many times more bees now than we did back then."

His research on the bees suggests that deforestation and forest fires could be putting them at risk of extinction, for good this time. 

Searching for bees 

The rediscovery of P. lactiferus was a lucky accident for Dorey.

"Knowing that P. lactiferus hadn't been found for so long meant that I was keeping an eye open for it as I sampled my way up the coast," Dorey said. "Once I managed to find the first specimen I had a place to start and the opportunity to look for more."

After the discovery Dorey spent five months surveying 245 sites across Queensland and New South Wales in search for more of the masked bees. Dorey focused his efforts on certain flowering plants that were similar to those where he found the first individual. The sampling involved a combination of both watching flowers to see if the bees visited them and "general sweeps" with a butterfly net above the flowers.

The survey revealed three geographically isolated populations of the masked bees across Australia's eastern coast. Each population lives in patches of tropical and subtropical rainforest with a specific vegetation type. Dorey thinks that the bees are particularly dependent on firewheel trees (Stenocarpus sinuatus) and Illawarra flame trees (Brachychiton acerifolius). 

Under threat 

The survey has identified more individuals of P. lactiferus than ever before. But due to poor historic records there is no way of knowing if the masked bee populations have increased or decreased over time, according to Dorey.

Although the bees' may live in isolated populations because they strongly prefer certain habitats, Dorey also suspects that deforestation and increasingly severe and numerous wildfires could also be playing a role in their isolation.

"Where these bees have been found, that rainforest type has undergone habitat destruction and fragmentation," Dorey said. "This means that there is less of this habitat available," and that makes it "harder for [the bees] to move between what's left."

Unfortunately, rising temperatures caused by climate change will only worsen wildfires, and deforestation is only continuing, which means "these potential threats are likely to get worse," Dorey said. 

"Smaller, and lower-quality fragments might make it more likely that P. lactiferus will go extinct in each fragment, and less likely that it will be able to recolonize from another," Dorey said.

Therefore, protecting these habitat fragments is key to their survival.

However, protecting species is impossible without tracking the bees' numbers as well as changes in their habitats. 

"Without it we have no idea what's going on in ecosystems," Dorey said. "If we did not go and look, then species declines would certainly go unnoticed and the protection of species would be impossible."

The study was published online Feb. 25 in the Journal of Hymenoptera Research.

Originally published on Live Science.

Palm oil is an edible vegetable oil that comes from the pulp of oil palm tree fruit. Native to West Africa, the oil palm tree is now most commonly grown in the tropics of Southeast Asia. 

Palm oil is the most commonly produced vegetable oil in the world and is incorporated in a wide range of products, including many food items, cosmetics and biofuels. Worldwide annual production of the oil from 2018 to 2019 was nearly 81.6 million tons (71 million metric tons), according to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), and is expected to reach 264 million tons (240 million metric tons) by 2050, The Guardian reported in 2019. For reference, global annual production of soybean oil, the second most produced oil in the world, was about 63 million tons (57 million metric tons) from 2018 to 2019, according to the USDA. 

The global market for palm oil grows with every passing year: By 2022, its worth is estimated to reach $88 billion, according to the World Health Organization. The biggest global suppliers of palm oil are Indonesia, followed by Malaysia. Combined, those countries produce approximately 85% of the world's palm oil. 

The production of palm oil is controversial, as oil palm plantations take the place of thousands of acres of mowed-down forests, making palm oil production one of the biggest drivers of deforestation. On the other hand, palm oil production provides jobs for millions of people and is an important natural resource in areas of the world with struggling economies. 

Why is palm oil in everything?

Experts have estimated that palm oil can be found in about 50% of packaged items in the supermarket, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). This includes everything from detergents to cosmetics to candy. 

The attractiveness of palm oil to manufacturers lies in its cheap cost and versatility. It has a much higher production rate per hectare than any other vegetable oil, and it requires relatively small amounts of energy, fertilizer and pesticides to produce. Oil palm produces about 35% of all vegetable oil on less than 10% of the land allocated to oil-producing crops. To obtain the same amount of alternative oils, such as soybean or coconut oil, between four and 10 times more land would be required, according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). 

Palm oil is the most common cooking oil in Asia, with India, China and Indonesia accounting for nearly 40% of all palm oil consumed worldwide. It's a popular oil to cook with because of its high heat resistance, its long shelf life and, most importantly, its low price. 

Why is palm oil bad for the environment?

Palm oil production is seen as a path out of poverty for the populations of developing countries where it's produced because it drives economic development. That trend has proliferated across the world; more palm oil plantations are beginning to pop up across Asia, Africa and Latin America. The palm oil industry employs as many as 3.5 million workers across Indonesia and Malaysia, according to a report by Humanity United. 

However, the rapid expansion of oil palm plantations means that palm oil production is also a major contributor to large-scale deforestation. Industrial oil palm plantations have caused 56% of deforestation on the island of Borneo since 2005, according to a study in the journal Scientific Reports. 

The increasing dedication of land once occupied by tropical forests and other species-rich habitats to palm oil plantations has made palm oil production a major threat to biodiversity. The expansion of plantations has led to the increasingly serious risk of extinction for the orangutan, the pygmy elephant and the Sumatran rhino. The production of palm oil affects at least 193 threatened species, according to The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. 

Palm oil plantations are also a huge source of greenhouse gas emissions. Because they are typically established on land converted from swamp forests, clearing the land releases large amounts of carbon dioxide and methane. The most common method of clearing is by incineration, or so-called "slash-and-burn practices," which also contribute to regional smoke haze and water pollution.

The wastewater from palm oil refineries is another huge source of methane. A study published in the journal Nature Climate Change showed that the methane produced by a single pond of palm refinery wastewater has the same annual climate impact as 22,000 cars. 

Can palm oil ever be sustainable? 

Environmentally conscious consumers might think that boycotting products containing palm oil — either by not purchasing them or by putting pressure on retailers to forego it — is the best route toward eliminating the environmental damage caused by palm oil plantations. But it's not as simple as that. 

If palm oil use were restricted, it would need to be replaced by other types of vegetable oils in order to meet the global demand for it. However, there is no equal alternative. Other oils such as rapeseed, sunflower and soybean are nowhere near as efficient to produce as palm. In 2018, the IUCN released a report that described how boycotting palm oil would simply shift the crop's biodiversity impacts to regions where its replacement oils are produced, such as the tropical forests and savannas of South America. 

"If you're shifting demand to a less efficient oil, you're going to need more land, and more land comes at the expense of the natural habitats that we all cherish and love across the world," said Matthew Struebig, a tropical conservation scientist at the University of Kent in the United Kingdom.

Related: Momentum builds for deforestation-free palm oil (Op-Ed)

Our best hope for decreasing the environmental impacts of palm oil is to strive "for more sustainable production," Struebig told Live Science. And that means more than just eliminating the threat to endangered species. 

"Sustainability is much broader than just species protection. It's about people's livelihoods; it's about their well-being; it's about greenhouse gas emissions; it's about clean, healthy water; it's about having access to a decent wage," he said. "The issues that are there are much broader than orangutans." 

As of 2020, just under 20% of palm oil is sustainably produced, according to the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), a global initiative formed in 2004 that sets specific standards regarding deforestation, lawfulness, transparency and social impact — standards that must be met in order for palm oil to be considered sustainably derived. Companies such as PepsiCo, Unilever, Nestlé and General Mills have made the commitment to source 100% RSPO-certified sustainable palm oil.

Several nonprofit groups are also working toward a more sustainable palm oil industry in countries where millions are dependent on its continued existence. For example, an initiative based in Malaysia called Wild Asia is helping to organize hundreds of small farmers into larger groups that can be certified to sell palm fruit that meets the requirements of the Malaysian Sustainable Palm Oil (MSPO) and RSPO Production standard, so it benefits both the farmers and the environment. 

Palm oil isn't going away anytime soon. So, the most effective way to curb the environmental impacts of palm oil is to support the initiatives and brands committed to a more sustainable palm oil industry. 

Additional resources: 

• Read more about the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil's mission.
• Check out the new Palm Oil Scorecard, from WWF. 
• Find more helpful resources for learning about palm oil from the Rainforest Action Network. 

Deforestation of the Amazon rainforest increased by 278% in July 2019 compared with July 2018, resulting in the destruction of 870 square miles (2,253 square kilometers) of vegetation, new satellite data from the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research (INPE) show.

That’s an area about twice the size of the city of Los Angeles. And, while the forest still spans some 2.1 million square miles (5.5 million square km — just a little bit bigger than Mexico), the spike in tree loss is part of a dangerous trend. According to the Associated Press, this is the single biggest surge in rainforest destruction since INPE began monitoring deforestation with its current methodology in 2014.

These data come courtesy of INPE's satellite monitoring program, DETER (Detection of Deforestation in Real Time), which launched in 2004 to help INPE scientists detect and prevent illegal deforestation in the Amazon. The release falls in the midst of an ongoing feud between INPE scientists and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, a climate change skeptic who vowed on the campaign trail to open more of the Amazon to various mining, logging and agricultural interests, despite environmental protections on the land.

On Friday (Aug. 2), Bolsonaro fired then-head of INPE, Ricardo Galvão, after the agency posted satellite data showing an 88% deforestation increase in June 2019 compared with June 2018. Bolsonaro called the data "a lie" and accused Galvão of serving "some NGO" (nongovernmental organization). The president's administration also announced that the government would hire a private company to take over Amazon deforestation monitoring.

In a statement announcing his termination, Galvão defended INPE's work and called the president's decision "an embarrassment." It is not, however, a surprise. Bolsonaro's attack on INPE follows seven months of policy decisions that weaken environmental legislation and science agencies while empowering business interests, the AP reported.

As the largest remaining rainforest on Earth, the Amazon is also one of the planet's single largest carbon offsets, absorbing as much as 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide every year (as its trees use it for photosynthesis) and releasing roughly 20% of Earth's oxygen. Protecting the Amazon and other rainforests is one of the most cost-effective ways to combat the ongoing climate crisis, according to Amazonconservation.org.

• In Photos: Plants in Danger of Disappearing
• 8 Ways Global Warming is Already Changing the World
• Images of Melt: Earth’s Vanishing Ice

Originally published on Live Science.

We are sucking the life out of our beautiful planet.

Up to 1 million species are at risk of extinction due to human activity, according to a draft of a U.N. report set to be released on May 6. Preliminary conclusions from the report were obtained by the French news agency AFP.

Human activity, such as overconsumption, illegal poaching, deforestation and fossil fuel emissions, are pushing ecosystems toward a point of no return. A quarter of known plant and animal species are already threatened — and the loss of species is tens to hundreds of times higher than it has been, on average, over the last 10 million years, AFP reported. [Wipe Out: History's Most Mysterious Extinctions]

Nature is buckling under the pressure, losing clean air, potable water, pristine forests, pollinating insects, fish populations, and storm-buffering mangroves.

What's more, three-quarters of the land, almost half of marine environments and half of inland waterways have been "severely" changed by human activity, according to the report. These changes will harm humans, especially indigenous groups and those living in the poorest communities.

One-hundred and thirty nations will meet in Paris on April 29 to examine the 44-page report that summarizes a 1,800-page assessment of scientific literature conducted by the U.N.

"The way we produce our food and energy is undermining the regulating services that we get from nature," Robert Watson, the chair of the group that compiled the report, told the AFP. The damage, he said, can be diminished only with "transformative change."

• The Reality of Climate Change: 10 Myths Busted
• Images of Melt: Earth's Vanishing Ice
• Predicting the Future of our Climate

Originally published on Live Science.

Years of deforestation in Peru are visible from space, tracked in a new animation created from NASA satellite views. And the forest loss is escalating at an alarming rate.

The image series was captured by satellites Landsat 7 and Landsat 8 from 2013 to 2018. Shared on April 19 by NASA Earth Observatory, the animated sequence reveals devastating depletion in the forests of southeastern Peru's Madre de Dios region, covering approximately 1,350 square miles (3,500 square kilometers).

Andrea Nicolau, a graduate research assistant at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, mapped forest loss in the images using a technique known as spectral mixture analysis, which differentiates between types of land cover based on light properties in every pixel, according to NASA. Using this method, Nicolau determined that about 79 square miles (206 square km) of forest disappeared during the five-year period, and the greatest loss took place between 2017 and 2018. [Gallery: Rare Species of the Andes and Amazon]

The hardest-hit areas were found in buffer zones close to protected areas. Illegal gold mining is responsible for much of the deforestation on lands belonging to the indigenous Peruvian tribe known as Kotsimba Native Community. Indeed, those involved with mining operations and other activities that threaten Peruvian forests now have easier access to remote locations following the recent completion of Peru's Interoceanic Highway, NASA reported.

Madre de Dios rests near the Amazon basin and is a biodiversity hotspot, home to species that live nowhere else on Earth. But with deforestation on the rise, plants and animals that are endemic to the region face an uncertain future. By tracking and analyzing patterns of forest loss, conservationists and government officials can better strategize how to protect vulnerable species, according to NASA.

• Amazon Photos: Trees That Dominate the Rain Forest
• Photos: Huge Swath of Amazon Preserved in Record-Setting Deal
• Gallery: Images of Uncontacted Tribes

Originally published on Live Science.

A furry, cat-size carnivore called the Humboldt marten is struggling to survive in an area sprouted with marijuana farms, and now California wants to protect the adorable creature by declaring it an endangered species.

The state's declaration would apply only within state lines and wouldn't offer federal protections. 

A member of the weasel family, the Humboldt marten (Martes caurina humboldtensis) lives deep inside the redwood forests of the Pacific Northwest, according to the Center for Biological Diversity. The elusive animal was once thought to be extinct, but it was rediscovered in 1996. The Center for Biological Diversity estimates that 95 percent of the marten's habitat has disappeared due to deforestation. [In Images: 100 Most Threatened Species]

There are two populations of Humboldt martens remaining: a group of about 100 in Oregon, and another group of about 200 in northern California, right where cannabis cultivation is booming, The Guardian reported. In Humboldt County, California, where the martens are found, there are an estimated 4,000 to 15,000 cannabis cultivation sites, The Guardian reported. That's in addition to the illegal operations and "trespass grows" on public or tribal lands, The Guardian reported.

Cannabis cultivation is likely the biggest reason for the Humboldt marten's decline, The Guardian reported. Not only are forests cleared to make room for farming, but many cannabis farmers also use rodenticides that make their way into the forest food chain, killing anything that eats rodents, including the martens. Live Science reported on a similar story in January about spotted owls (Strix occidentalis) in this same region of California that are dying after eating prey killed with toxic rodenticide left out by marijuana farmers.

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) reviewed a petition filed by the Center for Biological Diversity and the California-based Environmental Protection Information Center asking the state to list the animal as endangered. The marten is currently classified by California as a species of special concern, but a status review from the CDFW found that listing the species as endangered is warranted, The Mercury News reported. The final determination is expected to be made in August, The Mercury News reported.

Original article on Live Science.

A pair of jaguar cubs born June 6 in Iberá National Park in northern Argentina are more than just totally adorable. As the first born in the park in decades, the week-old cubs are bringing hope to conservationists who are trying to save these giant cats from a population decline.

The cubs' first-time mother, a three-legged jaguar named Tania, was born and raised in a zoo, while their father, Chiqui, was born in the wild but raised at a rescue center. Conservationists brought the two jaguars into the park to meet and mingle as part of a Jaguar Reintroduction Program launched by Tompkins Conservation in 2011 and funded by National Geographic.

Jaguars are listed by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species as "Near Threatened," and their numbers have decreased by 40 percent since historical estimates, according to National Geographic. There are roughly 15,000 wild jaguars worldwide today, 200 of which live in Argentina. The goal is to bring the population in the 341,205-acre park to at least 100, according to National Geographic. [Gallery: Tiger Species of the World]

Jaguar numbers have been declining mostly because of deforestation that has fragmented their habitat, led to the demise of their prey and exposed them to hunters.

Conservationists hope that as the babies grow, they will learn from their mother how to hunt, so that eventually they can be released in the middle of the park to live in the wild. (If they can't hunt on their own, the scientists will provide them with meat without being exposed to humans.) But all in all, for an inexperienced mother, Tania is doing quite well with her not-yet-named babies, according to the National Geographic.

For a few more days, the conservationists will just continue to check in on the first-time-mother and her babies through remote surveillance, to allow them a chance to begin to naturally grow up together, without the touch of a human fingerprint.

Originally published on Live Science.

For astronauts aboard the International Space Station, any glance out the window could inspire wonder and awe. One spaceflyer was recently treated to a special sight: a giant checkerboard stretching across part of the planet's surface.

The astronaut did not actually spy a giant board for playing checkers or chess, of course. Rather, patches of deforestation in Idaho created the checked pattern, according to NASA. The white squares show where snow had fallen on deforested ground, while the alternate dark areas show dense forest, the agency said. 

Dividing parcels of land in a checkerboard pattern was first agreed upon in in the 1800s, when the U.S. government granted alternate 1-square-mile (2.6 square kilometers) parcels of land to the Northern Pacific Railway according to NASA. [Earth from Above: 101 Stunning Images from Orbit]

"These parcels were later sold off and in many cases harvested for timber. The checkerboard — which has since evolved to the one-quarter-mile [0.4 km] squares shown here — is now seen as a method of maintaining the sustainability of forested tracts while still enabling logging companies to harvest trees," NASA officials at the agency's Earth Observatory wrote in a blog post.

In the image, the checkered pattern is bordered to the left by the Priest River, which winds through the Selkirk Mountains in northern Idaho. Historically, the river was used to transport wood from the logging sites, but in 1968, the U.S. government classified the body of water as a "wild and scenic river" and so it is now protected from development.

Original article on Live Science.

A monkey that sneezes whenever it rains, a fish that can survive out of water for four days and a venomous pit viper that is as lovely to look at as a piece of jewelry: These are just a few of the hundreds of new species discovered over the past few years in the diverse but highly threatened region of the east Himalayas.

Between 2009 and 2014, scientists discovered a total of 211 new species in the region, which stretches from central Nepal in the west to Myanmar in the east and includes the kingdom of Bhutan, as well as parts of northeast India and southern Tibet. An average of 34 new plant and animal species have been discovered annually in the region for the past six years, according to a newly released report from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

"I am excited that the region — home to a staggering number of species including some of the most charismatic fauna — continues to surprise the world with the nature and pace of species discovery," Ravi Singh, CEO of WWF-India and chair of the WWF Living Himalayas Initiative, said in a statement. [101 Animal Shots You'll Go Wild Over]

'Charismatic fauna'

Among the most impressive new species included in the WWF's report is the sneezing monkey, which scientists nicknamed "Snubby." The unusual critter lives in a remote region in northern Myanmar, an area of rugged mountains and dense forests. Snubby has an upturned nose (hence its nickname) that has a tendency to collect rainwater, causing the black-and-white–hued monkey to sneeze when it rains. To avoid sneezing fits, the animals spend rainy days with their heads tucked between their knees, according to the WWF.

Northern Myanmar is also home to a tiny but terrifying new species of fish, Danionella dracula, which is the size of a minnow but has pointy fangs jutting out from its jaws. Another strange fish from the eastern Himalayas is Channa andrao, a snakehead fish with some truly strange qualities. The vibrant blue fish can "walk" on land by wriggling around on its belly. The fish's ability to breath air means it can live on land for a few days before returning to its freshwater habitat.

The only new reptile discovered in the eastern Himalayas since 2009, the bejeweled lance-headed pit viper (Protobothrops himalayansus), is also something special. Even if you don't like snakes, it's hard to deny this venomous serpent's beauty. The reptile's striking, diamondlike pattern and red-brown coloration give the snake a bejeweled quality.

'At a crossroads'

All of these newly discovered species may sound like great news to anyone who appreciates biodiversity, but the WWF report also highlights the many threats facing the east Himalayas. Perhaps the most pressing is climate change, with the threat of habitat loss caused by deforestation, development and overgrazing not far behind.

Only 25 percent of the original habitats in the region remain intact, according to the WWF report, which found that rapid development has affected the vast majority of the region's lands.

"The eastern Himalayas is at a crossroads. Governments can decide whether to follow the current path towards fragile economies that do not fully account for environmental impacts, or take an alternative path towards greener, more sustainable economic development," Sami Tornikoski, leader of the WWF Living Himalayas Initiative, said in a statement.

In total, the Himalayas are home to an estimated 10,000 plant species and 300 mammal species. Nearly 1,000 different species of birds call the region home, along with hundreds of species of reptiles, amphibians and freshwater fish. In the new WWF report alone, more than 130 new species of plants were discovered in the area.

The challenge that organizations like the WWF face is to both conserve the species that scientists have already identified and protect a region that likely shelters even more creatures and plants waiting to be discovered.

Follow Elizabeth Palermo @techEpalermo. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

Earth Day is a time to celebrate and protect the pale blue dot we call home. But some of its crown jewels may be vanishing.

Many parts of the globe face threats from warming temperatures, sea level rise, drought, and other effects of climate change and human activity.

Here are 10 amazing places to visit before it's too late. [Images: One-of-a-Kind Places on Earth]

1. Tuvalu

This Polynesian island nation, located between Hawaii and Australia, may be a tropical paradise, but it risks becoming submerged by rising seas as a warming climate melts ice sheets and causes water to expand. The islands — which are home to about 10,000 people — lie just 6.6 feet (2 meters) above sea level. Currently, seas there are rising at a rate of about 0.2 inches (5 millimeters) per year since 1993, compared with the global average of 0.11 to 0.14 inches (2.8 to 3.6 mm) per year, satellite data show. Experts predict that, even with a conservative greenhouse-gas-emissions scenario, sea levels in the region will rise by up to 17.7 inches (45 cm) by 2090, according to a report by Australia's Pacific Climate Change Science Program, and such a rise could make Tuvalu uninhabitable.

2. Glacier National Park

True to its name, this Montana park — which borders the Canadian provinces of Alberta and British Columbia and spans more than 1 million acres (4,000 square km) — was once home to hundreds of glaciers, but these stunning icescapes won't be around forever. Most of the 150 glaciers present in 1850 were still there when the park opened in 1910. But as of 2010, only 25 glaciers remained, and some climate models predict that the park's biggest glaciers will be gone by 2030, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

3. Great Barrier Reef

Few snorkel spots are as well known as Australia's Great Barrier Reef. But as humanity pumps more and more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the oceans absorb more of the gas and become more acidic. The increased acidity affects creatures like coral that use calcium carbonate to form their shells, and the Great Barrier Reef could be one of the first casualties. Over the past three decades, half of the reef has vanished, according to a study published in 2012 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [Photos of Great Barrier Reef Through Time]

And the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that by 2050, 97 percent of the reef's corals could suffer annual bleaching, or loss of the symbiotic algae that live inside, Scientific American reported.

4. The Alps

A favorite vacation spot for skiers and outdoor enthusiasts alike, the Alps may be in trouble. The region has been warming at about three times the worldwide average, according to a 2006 report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. By the end of the century, those giant chunks of ice could be nearly gone, researchers at the University of Zurich in Switzerland reported in a 2006 issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters. Their prediction was based on a computer model.

Skiers aren't the only ones who will be affected by the warming temperatures — the Alps also supply about 40 percent of Europe's freshwater, Live Science reported previously.

5. Amazon rainforest

This vast tract of South American jungle — the largest and most diverse tropical rainforest in the world — is now under threat from climate change. A 2009 study from the U.K. Met Office found that a global temperature rise of just 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) above preindustrial levels would cause 20 to 40 percent of the Amazon rainforest to die off in the next century, while a rise of 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius) could decimate 85 percent of the rainforest, according to a study submitted to the journal Nature Geoscience in 2009. The rainforest is home to some incredible animals, such as the capybara — the world's largest rodent — and the Amazon pink river dolphin. [Biodiversity Abounds: Stunning Photos of the Amazon]

6. Kiribati

This Pacific island nation was the first country to announce that global warming is rendering its lands uninhabitable, and to ask for help in relocating its population. Melting ice and thermal expansion will cause global sea levels to rise by 1 to 3 feet (up to 1 m) by the end of the century, the IPCC estimates. The rising seas would submerge the country's 33 atolls and coral islands, most of which lie only about 3.3 to 6.6 feet (1 to 2 m) above sea level. However, some ocean currents may protect Kiribati from the impacts of global warming, according to a 2012 study published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

7. Venice

This romantic Italian city of canals and masked carnivals is slowly sinking, studies show. The city is naturally subsiding at a rate of about 0.03 to 0.04 inches (0.8 to 1 mm) per year, while man-made activity is causing it to sink an additional 0.08 to 0.39 inches (2 to 10 mm) per year, according to a 2013 study published in the journal Scientific Reports. As the ground subsides, the city becomes even more vulnerable to flooding, whichcould make the metropolis uninhabitable by the end of the century, some experts say.

8. The Dead Sea

The famous salty lake that lies between Israel, Palestinian territory and Jordan has long drawn tourists and pilgrims to its shores for the supposed health benefits of its mineral-rich waters. But the lake has been drying up, due to diversion of water from its main tributary, the Jordan River, in addition to mineral mining operations in the South. As the water recedes, freshwater has entered in its wake, dissolving salt deposits and spawning gaping sinkholes that open up without warning.

9. Gansu province, China

China's Gansu province, home to the stunning multicolored rock formations of Zhangye Danxia Geological Park, is one of the driest parts of the country. The province is already feeling the effects of climate change, as warming temperatures bring on droughts and shrink glaciers in the Himalayas and central Asia, which feed China's rivers.Up to 28,000 of the country's rivers may have disappeared since the 1990s, according to China's first National Census of Water.

10. California

The Golden State may have it all, from beaches to mountains to redwood forests. But California is suffering one of the most severe droughts on record, which has prompted authorities to institute statewide water restrictions. The Sierra Nevada snowpack, which supplies about 30 percent of the state's water, was at its lowest in more than 100 years, according to the most recent survey. And thanks to a changing climate, such droughts could become the norm, studies suggest. 

Editor's Note: This article was updated at 1:04 p.m. ET April 22, to state a more correct record of the Sierra Nevada snowpack.

Follow Tanya Lewis on Twitter. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

The vast jungle canopy of the Amazon looks like a solid wall of green from space to the human eye. But satellites and other high tech instruments can provide a much more nuanced view right down to the household level.

That might sound like something the CIA would be interested in, but there’s another audience that could benefit even more: forest managers and scientists looking to sequester the most carbon possible. Now a new study has provided them with that view by creating the most detailed carbon maps ever produced for the Amazon.

The Amazon currently stores an estimated 120 billion tons of carbon and sucks up an astonishing 25 percent of carbon dioxide emitted from natural and human sources. But threats from logging, slash-and-burn agriculture and oil and gas exploration threaten to disrupt these crucial processes that help keep the climate mostly in balance.

To provide detailed views on exactly how the forest is changing and where the most carbon dense areas are, scientists published details on a new high-resolution mapping technique using satellite imagery and an airborne remote-sensing technology called Lidar in a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday. Scientists and governments can use the maps to see what areas of the Amazon need to be most protected from deforestation.

The threats to the Amazon in Peru are significant: More than 19.6 million hectares — 75,676 square miles, or roughly the size of Nebraska — have already been allowed to be logged or developed for oil and gas, the study says.

Other studies suggest as much as 65 percent of the Amazon’s biomass could be lost by 2060. Mining and oil palm plantations also threaten those forests, many of which are highly carbon-dense.

Greg Asner, the new study’s lead author and a staff scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, Calif., and his team surveyed Amazonian and Andean forests in Peru. Their survey was able to find the areas of Peru that contained the most carbon and the carbon-filled areas that were at highest risk for being developed.

Drying Amazon Could Be Major Carbon Concern NASA Warns of Climate Change’s Impact on the Amazon Amazon May Lose 65 Percent of Land Biomass by 2060

The carbon content of the land they surveyed ranged from almost zero carbon near the Pacific coast to 150 metric tons per hectare, or 2.47 acres, deep in the rainforest.

The team found an estimated 0.8 billion metric tons of stored carbon at risk of being released into the atmosphere because of deforestation. But if much of Peru’s lands with the highest carbon-storage potential were protected, they could store up to 3 billion metric tons of carbon nationwide, the team found.

In other words, if more of Peru’s rainforest were left unprotected, nearly a third of the carbon trapped in the trees and plants there would be released into the atmosphere, helping to fuel climate change and preventing future carbon emissions from being stored there.

“This study is the first anywhere in the world to provide a high-resolution, national-scale and geographically explicit accounting of vegetation carbon stocks in the tropics,” Asner told Climate Central. “Doing so allows two critically important steps forward in land use — climate change mitigation and ecological conservation.”

The mapping technique his team used helps researchers discover what parts of the rainforests are most threatened by deforestation and the parts of the forests containing the most carbon — land most in need of protection, at least from a climate change perspective, he said.

The accuracy and resolution of the map are so high that it’s accurate all the way down to individual pieces of property, allowing landowners to compare the carbon content of their land with that of their neighbors.

“This allows all stakeholders, large and small, to come to the table and to finally put forest carbon at the forefront of the effort to slow climate change,” Asner said. “I can’t emphasize enough how important this is to making forest carbon worth something, say, compared to other forms of land use such as surface mining or oil palm, which are major carbon emitters.”

The mapping technique can also be used in other parts of the globe to map carbon storage in other forests, but the remote sensing Lidar equipment would have to be recalibrated for forests outside the tropics, he said.

The technique and the carbon loss estimates it helps to produce could also be used to help scientists to determine how land use could affect changes in rainfall patterns in the Amazon, said Rong Fu, a University of Texas-Austin geoscientist whose research focuses on the connections between rainfall and forest burning in the Amazon.

Other recent research has shown rainfall in the Amazon is declining by as much as 25 percent over the past 14 years, partly because of a lack of greenness in the region. Deforestation is considered to be a factor in that decline.

If the trend continues, research suggests that parts of the Amazon could become savanna, preventing the lungs of the Earth from acting as one of the most important places carbon is stored naturally anywhere in the world.

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Originally published on Climate Central.

The reasons why the Ebola outbreak in West Africa has grown so large, and why it is happening now, may have to do with the travel patterns of bats across Africa and recent weather patterns in the region, as well as other factors, according to a researcher who worked in the region.

The outbreak began with Ebola cases that surfaced in Guinea, and subsequently spread to the neighboring countries of Liberia and Sierra Leone. Until now, none of these three West African countries had ever experienced an Ebola outbreak, let alone cases involving a type of Ebola virus that had been found only in faraway Central Africa.

But despite the image of Ebola as a virus that mysteriously and randomly emerges from the forest, the sites of the cases are far from random, said Daniel Bausch, a tropical medicine researcher at Tulane University who just returned from Guinea and Sierra Leone, where he had worked as part of the outbreak response team.

"A very dangerous virus got into a place in the world that is the least prepared to deal with it," Bausch told Live Science. [Ebola Virus: 5 Things You Should Know]

In a new article published today (July 31) in the journal PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, Bausch and a colleague reviewed the factors that potentially turned the current outbreak into the largest and deadliest Ebola outbreak in history. Although the focus is now on getting the outbreak under control, for long-term prevention, underlying factors need to be addressed, they said.

Here are five potential reasons why this outbreak is so severe:

The virus causing this outbreak is the deadliest type of Ebola virus.

The Ebola virus has five species, and each species has caused outbreaks in different regions. Experts were surprised to see that instead of the Taï Forest Ebola virus, which is found near Guinea, it was the Zaire Ebola virus that is the culprit in the current outbreak. This virus was previously found only in three countries in Central Africa: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of the Congo and Gabon.

Zaire Ebola virus is the deadliest type of Ebola virus — in previous outbreaks it has killed up to 90 percent of those it infected.

But how did the Zaire Ebola virus get to Guinea? Few people travel between those two regions, and Guéckédou, the remote epicenter of first cases of disease, is far off the beaten path, Bausch said. "If Ebola virus was introduced into Guinea from afar, the more likely traveler was a bat," he said.

It is also possible that the virus was actually in West Africa before the current outbreak, circulating in bats — and perhaps even infected people but so sporadically that it was never recognized, Bausch said. Some preliminary analysis of blood samples collected from patients with other diseases before the outbreak suggests people in this region were exposed to Ebola previously, but more research is needed to know for sure.

The affected countries are among the poorest in the world.

Guinea is not the only place bats migrate to, but it is one of the poorest countries in the world, ranking 178 out of 187 countries on the United Nations' Human Development Index. More than half of Guineans live below the national poverty line, and about 20 percent live in extreme poverty. Similarly, Liberia and Sierra Leone rank 174th and 177th on the Human Development Index. "These are countries coming out of civil war and struggling to get back on their feet," Bausch said. They are poorly equipped to respond to an outbreak and lack coordination to monitor people's movements across regions.

"Biological and ecological factors may drive emergence of the virus from the forest, but clearly, the sociopolitical landscape dictates where it goes from there — an isolated case or two, or a large and sustained outbreak," he said.

These countries lack robust health care systems.

A poor economy results in weak health care systems that are not prepared to respond to an outbreak and lack even basic health resources. It is not at all uncommon for the hospitals in the region to not have protective gloves, masks, clean needles and disinfectants, Bausch said.

Being unprepared to contain an infectious disease may even turn the health care setting into a hub for further spread of the disease, he said.

Poverty pushes people farther into the forests.

Even if the Ebola virus had been circulating in Guinea for some time, animals carrying the virus or other pathogens are not usually in the vicinity of humans, but rather deep in the forests with little chance of coming into contact with people. However, impoverished people tend to move into such territory in search of resources. [10 Deadly Diseases That Hopped Across Species]

"Poverty drives people to expand their range of activities to stay alive, plunging deeper into the forest to expand the geographic as well as species range of hunted game, and to find wood to make charcoal and deeper into mines to extract minerals," Bausch said. This increases people's risk of exposure to Ebola virus in remote corners of the forest, he added.

An extremely dry season may have triggered the Ebola to break out.

The first case of Ebola was identified in Guinea in December 2013, at the beginning of the dry season. In other countries, too, outbreaks often begin during the transition from the rainy to dry seasons, when conditions become drier sharply, Bausch said. It is possible that drier conditions somehow influence the number or proportion of bats infected with the Ebola virus, or the frequency of human contact with them.

More in-depth analysis is needed to better understand the weather conditions this year in Guinea, but "inhabitants in the region do, indeed, anecdotally report an exceptionally arid and prolonged dry season," Bausch said. This may be due, in part, to the extreme deforestation in the area over recent decades, he said.

Email Bahar Gholipour. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Originally published on Live Science.

A series of square, straight and ringlike ditches scattered throughout the Bolivian and Brazilian Amazon were there before the rainforest existed, a new study finds.

These human-made structures remain a mystery: They may have been used for defense, drainage, or perhaps ceremonial or religious reasons. But the new research addresses another burning question: whether and how much prehistoric people altered the landscape in the Amazon before the arrival of Europeans.

"People have been affecting the global climate system through land use for not just the past 200 to 300 years, but for thousands of years," said study author John Francis Carson, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom. [See Images of the Ancient Amazonian Earthworks]

Blemished Amazon?

For many years, archaeologists thought that the indigenous people who lived in the Amazon before Christopher Columbus arrived in the Americas in 1492 moved across the area while making barely a dent in the landscape. Since the 1980s, however, deforestation has revealed massive earthworks in the form of ditches up to 16 feet (5 meters) deep, and often just as wide.

These discoveries have caused a controversy between those who believe Amazonians were still mostly gentle on the landscape, altering very little of the rainforest, and those who believe these pre-Columbian people conducted major slash-and-burn operations, which were later swallowed by the forest after the European invasion caused the population to collapse.

Carson and his colleagues wanted to explore the question of whether early Amazonians had a major impact on the forest. They focused on the Amazon of northeastern Bolivia, where they had sediment cores from two lakes nearby major earthworks sites. These sediment cores hold ancient pollen grains and charcoal from long-ago fires, and can hint at the climate and ecosystem that existed when the sediment was laid down as far back as 6,000 years ago.

Ancient landscape

An examination of the two cores — one from the large lake, Laguna Oricore, and one from the smaller lake, Laguna Granja — revealed a surprise: The very oldest sediments didn't come from a rainforest ecosystem at all. In fact, the Bolivian Amazon before about 2,000 to 3,000 years ago looked more like the savannas of Africa than today's jungle environment.

The question had been whether the early Amazon was highly deforested or barely touched, Carson said.

"The surprising thing we found was that it was neither," he told Live Science. "It was this third scenario where, when people first arrived on the landscape, the climate was drier."

The pollen in this time period came mostly from grasses and a few drought-resistant species of trees. After about 2,000 years ago, more and more tree pollen appears in the samples, including fewer drought-resistant species and more evergreens, the researchers report today (July 7) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Charcoal levels also went down, indicating a less-fire-prone landscape. These changes were largely driven by an increase in precipitation, Carson said.

The earthworks predate this shift, which reveals that the diggers of these ditches created them before the forest moved in around them. They continued to live in the area as it became forested, probably keeping clear regions around their structures, Carson said.

"It kind of makes sense," he said. "It's easier to stomp on a sapling than it is to cut down a big Amazonian tree with a stone ax." [Gallery: Biodiversity of the Amazon (Photos)]

Questions answered

The discovery that the human activity came before the forest answers some questions, like how Amazonian people could have built in the rainforest with no more than stone tools (they didn't have to), how many people would have been necessary to construct the structures (fewer than if clear-cutting had been required), and how the population survived (by growing maize).

The study also has wider implications for the modern day, Carson said. The question of how to preserve the Amazonian rainforest is difficult to answer; some people say humans need to get out, and others believe people and the forest can coexist. Ancient history could provide a guide, as well as a greater understanding of how the forest has recovered from earlier perturbations. (The Amazon also drives climate as well as responds to it, thanks to its ability to take up carbon from the atmosphere.)

The new study suggests that the modern forest is a coproduction between humans and nature, Carson said. Natural cycles drove the rainforest to sprout, but humans stayed on-site for 1,500 years afterward, he said.

"It's very likely, in fact, that people had some kind of effect on the composition of the forest," Carson said. "People might favor edible species, growing in orchards and things like that, [or] altered the soils, changing the soil chemistry and composition, which can have a longer-lasting legacy effect."

Those long-range changes are next for Carson and his colleagues to investigate. "This kind of study has only just started in Amazonia," Carson said.

Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

Light pollution may slow the recovery of deforested rainforests by scaring away bats that would otherwise help disperse seeds and regenerate plant growth, according to a new report.

Deforested ecosystems rely on seed-dispersers — fruit-eating animals such as birds and bats — to help re-introduce seeds into empty plots. Frugivorous (or fruit-eating) bats are among the most important seed dispersers in tropical rainforests because they defecate while flying, emitting large quantities of seed-rich feces known as "seed rain" across wide areas. Birds, on the other hand, don't defecate while flying but instead release their droppings from isolated perches.

"Birds don't evenly distribute seeds," Daniel Lewanzik, a researcher at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin, told Live Science. "But bats fly over open areas and defecate while flying, so they disperse the seeds in a more homogenous manner."

This important ecological role may now be threatened by increasing levels of light pollution throughout Central American rainforests, Lewanzik and colleagues recently found in a study showing that bats were more likely to feed in dark conditions than in artificial light. Similar behavior has also been found in insect-eating bats, but this was the first study to show light-sensitivity in fruit-eating bats. [Flying Mammals: Gallery of Spooky Bats]

To test how light pollution affects the feeding behavior of tropical frugivorous bats, Lewanzik and colleagues conducted field and laboratory experiments on Sowell short-tailed bats — a species common across Central America — in which they manipulated light levels and counted the number of fruits eaten under different conditions.

The team found that the bats were two times more likely to enter dark feeding compartments than light compartments in the lab, and ate fruits nearly twice as often in dark compartments than in light compartments. The team observed a similar affinity for dark conditions in the field.

This light avoidance probably helps bats hide from predators, and may also result from light sensitivity in their eyes, Lewanzik said.

"It could be that bats get dazzled by the light," Lewanzik said. "The [bats'] eyes are adapted to work best at low light intensities, such that the eyes might need some minutes after being exposed to bright artificial lights to recover and to function again."

Bats are especially important in regenerating deforested regions because they eat fruit from shrubs and plants known as pioneer plants, which are generally the first plants to colonize an empty plot. Other plant species require shade and cannot flourish in deforested regions until these pioneer plants establish a small canopy, Lewanzik said.

"Bats are so important for deforested areas because they not only bring seeds into open areas but also feed on pioneer plants," Lewanzik said. "Many plants can't deal with those conditions, but those pioneer plants can."

The researchers suggest that limitations on light pollution could be enforced to help establish dark corridors that would encourage bats to travel across empty plots and continue to transfer seeds across wide regions. How large these corridors would need to be in order to be effective remains unclear, Lewanzik said.

The study findings are detailed today (March 10) in the Journal of Applied Ecology.

Follow Laura Poppick on Twitter. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

Forests around the world are disappearing at an astonishing rate. But now, these trees won't fall without a sound.

A new map and website called Global Forest Watch provides the first near-real-time look at the planet's forests, using a combination of satellite data and user-generated reports. The website's developers hope that Global Forest Watch will help local governments and companies combat deforestation and save protected areas.

"More than half a billion people depend on [forests] for their jobs, their food, their clean water," said Andrew Steer, the CEO of the World Resources Institute (WRI), which launched the website today (Feb. 20). "More than half of all terrestrial biodiversity lives in forests."

But humans are failing to preserve these crucial ecosystems, Steer told reporters before the launch. The equivalent of 50 soccer fields each minute have fallen every day of the past 13 years. [See Images of the New Deforestation Map]

Monitoring forests

Until now, there has been no good way to keep track of this rapid forest loss, leaving governments and organizations struggling to provide solutions. One example is the food company Nestlé, which committed to a zero-deforestation policy in 2010. The company pledged not to buy supplies such as palm oil from companies that clear-cut forested areas. Trying to trace these ingredients to their source proved incredibly difficult, said Duncan Pollard, the company's head of stakeholder engagement in sustainability. The company tried to do the research itself and ended up with reports full of rudimentary maps more than five years out of date.

The new Global Forest Watch will update monthly at a medium resolution with data from NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Terra and Aqua satellites. The resolution of these monthly updates is somewhat coarse, but every year, the map updates with much finer-grained imagery from NASA's Landsat program. Each pixel of Landsat data is roughly equivalent to a baseball infield, said Nigel Sizer, the director of the WRI Global Forest Initiative. That's 100 times finer than the monthly updates, according to Sizer.

"What is new here is that we are taking an enormous amount of very complex and very confusing information and making it available to everyone, everywhere," Sizer said. [Video: Monitoring Forests in Near Real-Time]

Mapping deforestation

The fine-grained map comes from the work of Matt Hansen, a geographer at the University of Maryland, and his colleagues, who published the first Landsat map of global deforestation last year. The WRI and about 40 other partners, including Google, then got on board to turn Hansen's map into something interactive and public.

At globalforestwatch.org, users can scroll across the globe and zoom in on areas of loss (and, more rarely, gain). Users of Google Maps will find the format very familiar, given that the company was a major partner in creating the website.

"If you can find a friend's address, you can easily use this map," Sizer said.

The map reveals sobering data, including supposedly protected areas that are nearly destroyed. Marahoué National Park in Côte d'Ivoire in Africa shows up completely pink on the map view — it has lost more than 90 percent of its trees despite its national park status.

Users can draw on the map and receive updates about the outlined region; in some areas, the map includes land use. In Indonesia, users can see which palm oil companies are operating in which areas. Before Global Forest Watch, no one had access to that information, Sizer said.

The site also has a section for stories, which allows users to submit news about areas that have been clear-cut or that are threatened.

The goal is to continue improving Global Forest Watch with more frequent data updates and algorithms that can differentiate between native forests and plantations.

"We now have the possibility of doing something that would have been absolutely unheard of 10 years ago," Steer said, "which is near real-time data delivered to everybody who has a laptop, or a computer, or a smartphone in the world."

Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

Global Forest Watch

Global Forest Watch, launched Feb. 20, 2014, provides a near real-time update of forest loss around the globe. [Read more about the Global Forest Watch website]

Forests from Orbit

Satellite images from NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites, as well as the Landsat satellites, shows clear-cutting encroaching on forests.

Indonesia Forest Loss

Pink overlaying the satellite imagery shows forest loss in Indonesia, where palm oil plantations and oil drilling are major deforestation drivers.

Active Fires Globally

Information from NASA's Aqua and Terra satellites shows active fires in the past seven days around the globe.

Forest Loss

Global Forest Watch updates monthly with medium-resolution satellite data, and annually with high-resolution data that shows forests in great detail.

Countries Mapped

Country pages organize deforestation and forest gain by nation.

Brazil Forest Data

Individual country pages on Global Forest Watch show national data on forest loss and gain.

Land Use

In Indonesia and several other regions, the map includes land-use data, such as clear-cutting or oil and gas concessions, seen here.

User Stories

Global Forest Watch users can upload local stories or alerts to warn of deforestation threats.

Protected Area Lost

Marahoue National Park in the Ivory Coast has lost more than 90 percent of its forest cover. On the Global Forest Watch Map, the protected area is shown in blue, overlapping with the pink deforestation.

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Beneath the lush forests of the Amazon is a whole different level of diversity that new research says may be one of the keys to understanding how to stem the global impacts of deforestation.

The Amazon rainforest is known as one of Earth’s hotspots for diversity. It contains at least 40,000 plant species, 5,500 animal species and 100,000 insect species. These have been a great source for the discovery of new medicines, with at least 120 approved for use. Despite its great plant and animal diversity, it is one of the least understood ecosystems for its microbial diversity. There are 100 million microorganisms in a single gram of forest soil, making them the largest repository in the world of novel genes.

These microbes are essential to nutrient recycling. They decompose dead organic matter, through a process called mineralisation, releasing mineral nutrients that plants absorb through their roots, allowing the forest to grow. As trees grow, they capture carbon dioxide from the air through the process of photosynthesis, and, in the Amazon, this process occurs at impressive levels. Owing to its size, the forest absorbs 1.5 billion tons of CO₂ from the atmosphere every year – making it the largest terrestrial sink of this greenhouse gas.

Large amounts of nitrogen are needed to achieve the Amazon’s role as a carbon sink. In the rainforest, that comes primarily from the natural process of nitrogen fixation performed by microbes called diazotrophs. They break apart molecules of nitrogen that is essential for all living things. But, up until now, no one has looked at how the function of these microbes changes when a rainforest is converted to a pasture, something that is happening at an alarming rate in many parts of the Amazon.

In work published in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology, we found a surprisingly large shift in microbial community composition when rainforests became pastures, confirming earlier studies. This may have major implication on how nutrients are cycled in the new ecosystem.

Any changes to the nitrogen cycle are likely to affect the carbon cycle and the forest’s capacity to sequester carbon dioxide. The process of deforestation is causing an addition of 1.6 billion tons of CO₂ to the atmosphere per year, substantially increasing greenhouse gases.

While these findings reinforce the toll deforestation is having, they also offer some hope.

Our examination revealed that approximately 50% of Amazon’s abandoned pastures are going through secondary forest formation. It is a process that happens mostly by chance, and when it happens diazotrophic communities tend to return to similar composition of the former forest.

The results imply that there is still time to conserve the immense genetic diversity of microbes as sources of new antibiotics and absorbers of carbon dioxide. Also, using our results, we can start devising new methods to aid the recovery of disturbed ecosystems – imagine a cocktail of microbes added for ecosystem restoration.

If nothing else, our research makes one thing clear: in the Amazon, the invisible microbes do as much as the now-disappearing trees to help our environment.

Jorge Rodrigues receives funding from US Department of Agriculture, US Department of Energy/Joint Genome Institute.

This article was originally published at The Conversation. Read the original article. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on LiveScience.

A tribe of indigenous Brazilians dubbed the world's most threatened are getting some breathing room in a new government effort to remove illegal loggers and ranchers from tribal lands.

The Awá, a group of about 450 men, women and children who are among the 800,000 or so indigenous residents of Brazil have been in a long legal battle over the rights to their lands in northeastern Brazil. The forested territory is of great interest to loggers, ranchers and miners, who have staked out claims in the area despite court decisions granting it to the Awá.

Now, Brazil's indigenous affairs department, known as FUNAI, has sent police and special agents to the territory to evict illegal squatters. [The Awá Album: Faces of a Threatened Tribe]

"This is a momentous and potentially lifesaving occasion for the Awá," said Stephen Corry, the director of Survival International, a tribal advocacy group that began a campaign to save the Awá in 2012.

Campaigning for an endangered tribe

In March 2012, a Brazilian judge published an order demanding the eviction of loggers and ranchers from Awá land by March 31, 2013. That deadline, however, passed without action as FUNAI lacked manpower and coordination with local agencies, Survival International reported.

"The Awá are just waiting and hearing the chainsaws on the land day and night, and the government hasn't gotten its act together yet," Survival International campaigner Sarah Shenker told LiveScience at the time.

In June 2013, police, military and Environmental Ministry special agents launched a ground campaign to shut down illegal loggers near the Awá territory. The clear-cutting done by these loggers threatens both the forest ecosystem and the hunter-gatherer lifestyle of the Awá, about 100 of whom are "uncontacted." That means they live a traditional lifestyle in the forest, avoiding interaction with outsiders.

Between June and July 2013, eight illegal saw mills were shut down, and the military destroyed other logging machinery, Survival reported. But the effort had not reached Awá land. Now, evictions in the tribe's territory have begun.

Threats to the tribe

Survival International dubbed the Awá "the most threatened tribe in the world," because deforestation caused by illegal logging has rapidly overtaken their land. The Awá Indigenous Territory — 463 square miles (120,000 hectares), or about the size of Los Angeles — has lost 30 percent of its tree cover since the 1980s, according to aerial surveys.

There have also been reports of violence as loggers push into protected territory. In 2012, The Telegraph reported that loggers burned an 8-year-old girl alive as part of a campaign of terror to move the Awá from their land. The reports came from a leader of a nearby tribe and from a Catholic group, the Indigenous Missionary Council. The Brazilian government was said to be investigating.

The uncontacted Awá, who hunt at night to avoid outsiders, are at the most risk, according to Survival International. Not only does their nomadic lifestyle depend on the forest, they lack immunity to common diseases transmitted by contact with such outsiders.

Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.

A new global map of deforestation reveals that 888,000 square miles (2.3 million square kilometers) of forest has vanished since 2000.

The interactive map (viewable online) is based on satellite data and is the first of its kind. The calculations are accurate down to about 100 feet (30 meters), enough detail to provide useful local information while still covering the whole globe.

"We say that it's globally consistent but locally relevant," said Matt Hansen, a geographer at the University of Maryland who led the mapping effort. "We can describe a global dynamic and compare regions as apples to apples, but if you cut out any particular corner, it would be accurate and have meaning."

Mapping deforestation

The map covers the time frame from 2000 to 2012, and includes both forest losses and forest gains. During that time, 309,000 square miles (800,000 square km) of new forests were gained. Of the 888,000 square miles lost and 309,000 square miles gained, about 77,000 square miles (200,000 square km) were areas that were lost between 2000 and 2012 and then re-established.

The rest of the loss and gain occurs in tandem all over the globe. For example, Brazil's efforts to slow deforestation have paid off, with about 500 square miles (1,300 square km) less loss each year. But the rest of the tropics more than made up for Brazil's improvements with rapidly increasing losses.

Indonesia saw the fastest increases in deforestation. Before 2003, the country lost less than 4,000 square miles (10,000 square km) per year. By 2011, more than 7,700 square miles (20,000 square km) of Indonesian forests vanished each year, Hansen and his colleagues report in the Nov. 15 issue of the journal Science.

Humans are the main driver of deforestation, through logging and clear-cutting, Hansen told LiveScience. Forest fires come next, mostly in the boreal forests of temperate regions. Storm damage also harms forests. [7 Ways the Earth Changes in the Blink of an Eye]

"We see a lot of blowdowns and that kind of thing," Hansen said.

Incredible detail

The broad-scale yet fine-grained map was made possible by three technology windfalls, Hansen said. The first was data from the Landsat 7 satellite, which launched in 1999 and has been snapping satellite photos of the globe ever since.

Next, Landsat's operator, the U.S. Geological Survey, altered its policies to make all of the data from Landsat 7 and previous Landsat satellites free. Previously, Hansen said, researchers had to buy the data piecemeal. It would have cost millions to purchase the data for the entire globe.

"We never had the data we needed," he said. "We had the data we could afford."

Finally, with access to all the satellite data came the need for major computing power to process it. Hansen and his colleagues teamed up with Google to make it happen. On a single computer, processing the data archive would have taken 15 years, Hansen said. With Google's cloud computing, it took mere days.

The fine scale of the map allows researchers to zoom in close enough to see logging roads, river meanders and even tornado tracks, Hansen said.

"There are a ton of stories here," he said. Some of the information that comes from forest maps is entirely unexpected, he added. One researcher took another of Hansen's maps and found that tree cover correlates with human health, because forest dwellers eat a more diverse diet than people in other environments do. 

In the North American West, damage from fire, logging and infection by the devastating mountain pine beetle is evident. A windstorm in 2009 shows up as leveled trees in southwestern France. In southern Sweden, an extratropical cyclone flattened forests in 2005.

Still, 32 percent of global loss occurred in the tropics, with half of that amount attributable to South American countries, the researchers found.

The data reveal that some areas that are supposedly protected really aren't, Hansen said. Clear-cutting appears even inside national-park boundaries in some countries.

Now, the team is working to map primary forest — native habitat that is crucial for biodiversity and storing climate-warming carbon — and differentiate it from secondary forests, which may provide tree cover but without the original ecosystems. The team also plans to continue to update the map annually, and hopes to be able to raise the deforestation alarm even more frequently in the future.

"We want to get in real-time mode," Hansen said.

Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.

How long does it take to build a little more than 30,000 miles (50,000 kilometers) of new roads through the rain forest? A new study finds that, in the Brazilian Amazon, such development can happen in just three years.

While roads cover only a tiny fraction of the total land surface of South America's largest nation, their effect on local ecosystems — particularly rain forests — may be huge. In an attempt to better understand road-building's effect on the Amazon, researchers from Imperial College London used road maps and satellite images to track the recent development of the Amazon road network.

The team's report, which was published this month in the journal Regional Environmental Change, concluded that approximately 10,000 miles (17,000 km) of roads were built every year in Brazil between 2004 and 2007. Not surprisingly, road networks were found to spread the most quickly in newly settled areas, as well as in areas experiencing renewed economic growth.

This rampant road-building may be a major contributor to deforestation and habitat loss in one of planet Earth's most biologically diverse regions. But by mapping road construction, researchers think they can aid future efforts to stop destruction of the Brazilian rain forest.

"Knowing where the roads are and the speed at which they are built is key to predicting deforestation," Rob Ewers, Imperial College London scientist and co-author of the study, said in a statement. "An understanding of road networks is the big missing gap in our ability to predict the future of this region."

The effects that roads have on local ecosystems extend far beyond the locations of the roads themselves. This includes changes in the temperature and humidity of air and soil and the movement of animals.

Past research suggests that certain configurations of road networks in the Amazon are more sustainable than others. A 2011 study, funded by the National Science Foundation, found that a "fishbone" configuration, for example, offers a solution that merges development with forest livelihood. Such a network allows roads to be built far enough away from one another that animals and connected ecosystems can continue to thrive despite the intrusion of human infrastructure.

But road construction is just one of many factors leading to the continued deforestation of the world's largest rain forest. Forest fires alone destroyed more than 33,000 square miles (85,500 square km) of forest between 1999 and 2010, according to a recent NASA release. That's an area larger than the state of South Carolina.

And a recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that forest fires in the Amazon are only going to get worse, as the region's annual dry season — also known as fire season — continues to extend every year.

Logging and farming also contribute to the continued destruction of the Amazon, with one expert attributing up to 90 percent of all cleared land in the region to the expansion of Brazil's cattle ranching industry.

Follow Elizabeth Palermo on Twitter @techEpalermo, Facebook or Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.

The Amazon is the largest and most diverse rain forest in the world — about 10 percent of all known species on Earth dwell there — but only a few dozen of the Amazon's thousands of tree species rule the jungle, researchers recently found.

This new analysis can help reveal which Amazon tree species face the most severe threats of extinction and which areas there are most in need of protection, scientists added.

Until now, researchers' knowledge of the types of trees in the Amazon and where they were located was based on analyses of regions — the rain forest's vast expanse made it challenging to survey in its entirety. For instance, scientists didn't even know the most common tree species in the Amazon.

To help shed light on this giant rain forest's tree composition, more than 120 scientists catalogued any trees with stems thicker than 3.9 inches (10 centimeters) at 1,170 different locations throughout Amazonia, the 2.3-million-square-mile area (6 million square kilometers) surrounding the Amazon River. They found that approximately 16,000 tree species made up this region. [Amazon Photos: Trees That Dominate the Rain Forest]

'Hyperdominant' trees

Of these 16,000 tree species, scientists unexpectedly discovered that only 227 species, or 1.4 percent of all the types of trees in Amazonia, made up half of the nearly 400 billion total trees estimated to live there.

"That's a much smaller number than anyone anticipated," study lead author Hans ter Steege, a tropical forest ecologist at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, Netherlands, said in a statement.

Hardly any of these "hyperdominant" species, as the researchers call them, are consistently common across the Amazon. Each usually specializes in certain habitats — one or two types of forest, such as swamps or white-sand forests.

It remains unclear what makes any given species hyperdominant. One possibility is that hyperdominant species are unusually resistant to disease and herbivores.

"There's a really interesting debate shaping up between people who think that hyperdominant trees are common because pre-1492 [i.e., pre-Christopher Columbus] indigenous groups farmed them and people who think those trees were dominant long before modern humans ever arrived in the Americas," study co-author Nigel Pitman, an ecologist and conservationist of the Field Museum in Chicago, said in a statement.

Incidentally, the most common tree species in Amazonia is the palm species Euterpe precatoria, a relative of the açaí palm Euterpe oleracea), whose sweet berries are growing in popularity worldwide. The researchers estimate that 5.2 billion Euterpe precatoria live in Amazonia.

The scientists also estimated that 11,000 of Amazonia's tree species are very rare, which each of these rare types composed of fewer than 1 million trees and in total accounting for just 0.12 percent of all trees in Amazonia. Many of these tree types run a high risk of becoming extinct, even before biologists can discover them, the researchers said.

Better protection

Now that scientists have a better idea of where populations of tree species are located in Amazonia, they can figure out which Amazonian tree species might face the most severe threats of extinction.

"We can better predict the effect of deforestation and protection on populations of trees," ter Steege told LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet.

In addition, conservation groups "can now better determine in which areas the richest, most diverse and potentially endangered species are found," Johan van de Gronden, director of the World Wildlife Fund Netherlands, said in a statement. "For the future of the Amazon, this is of great importance."

The scientists detailed their findings in the Oct. 18 issue of the journal Science.

Follow OurAmazingPlanet @OAPlanet, Facebook and Google+. Original article at LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet.

Small fires in the Amazon rain forest are having a huge impact.

A new satellite imaging technique has allowed scientists to see Amazonian fires burning beneath the jungle canopy, called "understory fires," which were previously difficult to detect. These fires destroy several times more forest than is taken out by deforestation each year, according to a new study, published recently in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.

Unlike fires in the Amazon's grassy areas, which can spread rapidly and are known to have towering flames, understory fires burn nearly undetected. But between 1999 and 2010, these forest fires burned more than 33,000 square miles (85,500 square kilometers), an area larger than the state of South Carolina, according to a NASA release.

"Amazon forests are quite vulnerable to fire, given the frequency of ignitions for deforestation and land management at the forest frontier, but we've never known the regional extent or frequency of these understory fires," Doug Morton, a researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and the study's lead author, said in the statement.

Signs of damage appear in the year after the fires occur, and then gradually disappear as the rain forest recovers, the NASA statement said. NASA scientists are using an instrument on the Terra satellite to detect these signs of damage, which include slight alterations in the amount and condition of foliage present.

These fires kill between 10 and 50 percent of the trees in the areas they burn and are likely an important source of carbon emissions that hasn’t been adequately accounted for in climate models, according to NASA.

The fires only happen when climatic conditions are right — for example, during times of low humidity, according to the statement. The fires usually occur near inhabited areas, however, and are likely ignited by cigarettes, campfires and other human sources, NASA said.  

Email Douglas Main or follow him on Twitter or Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebookor Google+. Article originally on LiveScience.com.

The deforestation of the Brazilian rain forest has created a hidden consequence: The seeds of palm trees have evolved rapidly to be smaller.

The change is the result of a domino effect that begins with human agriculture and hunting, which have devastated large bird populations in the Atlantic Forest of Brazil. With these birds, which include colorful toucans and cotingas, locally extinct or barely hanging on, the palm trees have no way to disperse their largest seeds. As a result, seed sizes are smaller in parts of the rain forest where large birds are missing, finds a new study detailed in the May 31 issue of the journal Science.

Combined with climate change, the result could be devastating for palms, said study leader Mauro Galetti, an ecologist at Paulista State University in Brazil.

"If we think about climate change, we will have less rainfall, and we know that for smaller seeds, they lose more water than large seeds," Galetti told LiveScience. "That's a major problem for this palm." [Images: Palm Trees and Lost Birds of Brazil]

Shrinking seeds

The Atlantic Forest runs along the coast of Brazil, starting at the easternmost tip of South America and continuing approximately to the country's southern border. The region has been heavily altered by human agriculture, with only about 12 percent of the original forest remaining. Of that area, about 80 percent is disjointed fragments too small to support large animals. As a result, large fruit-eating birds have vanished or nearly vanished from much of the forest. These birds swallow fruit seeds and spread them through their droppings over many miles, making the animals crucial to the forest ecosystem.

Galetti and his colleagues studied seed sizes in 22 populations of palm trees, some in fragments where hardly any large birds survive and others where bird populations are relatively robust. 

They found that seeds are consistently smaller in sites without large birds. Seed sizes vary, but in areas with few or no large birds, common sizes range from about 0.3 to 0.4 inches (8 to 10 millimeters) in diameter, with almost no seeds a half-inch (12 mm) in diameter. In areas with robust large-bird populations, half-inch (seeds are common, with some seeds reaching 0.55 inches (14 mm). In sites without large birds, the researchers found that seeds with a diameter of a half-inch or larger had nearly no chance of being dispersed away from their parent tree.

Other factors — such as soil fertility, forest cover and climate — could not explain the change in seed size, the researchers reported.

Human action

Using genetic data from the seeds, Galetti and his colleagues created computer models to figure out how long it would have taken trees to evolve smaller seeds in bird-free zones.

"For the plants that we studied, it was 50 to 75 years," Galetti said. "It's quite fast."

Human deforestation in the Atlantic Forest dates back to the 1800s, more than enough time for the observed changes to evolve.

The researchers plan to study other plant species, and to take a deeper look at the genetics of the seeds, to understand how forest fragmentation might be affecting heredity.

The only way to turn the tide against the changes, Galetti said, is reforestation and conservation.

"First of all, we have to replant the forest and put back animals that are important, and stop hunting," he said.

Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.

Today is not a holiday that spawns the excitement of Christmas, or even Valentine's Day. But then again, there are no gift-giving obligations or impossible restaurant reservations to make.

Yes, it's Arbor Day, celebrated nationally on the last Friday in April, though some states have their own dates to better coincide with good tree-planting weather. Read on for five quirky facts about this holiday, including its odd roots.

1. The origins of Arbor Day

When you think of trees, what state jumps to mind? California, with its redwoods? Vermont and its sugar maples? How about Nebraska? [Image Gallery: One-of-a-Kind Places on Earth]

Despite (or rather, because of) a naturally treeless prairie landscape, Nebraska is the birthplace of Arbor Day.

The holiday began with journalist Julius Sterling Morton, who moved from Detroit to Nebraska in 1854. At the time, the wide open spaces of the west weren't working out so well for pioneers — the shadeless prairie was hot in the summer, with few windbreaks to keep tilled soil from blowing right into Kansas. The solution? Plant a tree.

Morton rose to become the state secretary, and helped establish the first Arbor Day on April 10, 1872. More than 1 million trees were planted across the state that day.

Arbor Day became a national sensation in 1907, when President Theodore Roosevelt issued a proclamation to school children about forestry and the importance of trees.

2. We really do need trees

Nebraska may not have been a naturally tree-friendly spot, but Morton's heart was in the right place. The European colonists who came to America instituted massive deforestation from the start. The East Coast easily competed with the enormous Redwoods of the Pacific seaboard.

At the time when Christopher Columbus landed in the Americas, "it's said that squirrels could travel from tree to tree from the Northeast to the Mississippi without ever having to touch the ground," Chris Roddick, chief arborist at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden in New York, told LiveScience in 2009. "In the old-growth forests in the Northeast, you had hemlock that were six or seven feet in diameter, chestnut trees 200 feet tall."

Trees sequester carbon that would otherwise end up in the atmosphere, warming the globe, Roddick said. They also provide some of the benefits that Morton was looking for, including shade that lowers the need for air conditioning. Oh, and greening up urban spaces may even improve city dwellers' mental health.

3. And America's national tree is …

America has a national tree, and it's all thanks to Arbor Day. In 2004, the National Arbor Day Foundation hosted a vote on its website for a national tree. The winner pulled ahead early and never flagged: The oak tree.

In December 2004, Congress passed legislation designating the oak as Americ'a national tree, touting its infamous strength. The oak won 101,000 votes in the National Arbor Foundation contest. The redwood came in second place with 81,000 votes. Dogwood, maple and pine rounded out the top five contenders.

4. That's a lot of trees

The National Arbor Foundation isn't just about crowning the prettiest tree of them all. The group, which formed in 1972, distributes some 10 million trees each year and works with the National Forest Service to re-plant lost forests. The group estimates that its donations have funded the planting of more than 20 million trees in forests since 1990.

5. Birdsey takes Arbor Day international

Americans aren't the only ones digging out the garden spades come spring. In 1895, a retired Connecticut clergyman named Birdsey Grant Northrop went to Japan and brought his love of trees. Northrop had previously researched forestry in Europe, triggering a wave of environmental self-examination back in Connecticut and culminating in the establishment of a state Arbor Day. At 78, Northrop convinced the Japanese Minister of Education to establish Arbor Day in that country. He also evangelized about trees in Australia, Canada and Europe, according to the Connecticut state government.

Today, at least 36 countries worldwide celebrate Arbor Day.

Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.

California's giant redwoods will now be found in six foreign countries. A new non-profit group is shipping 18-inch (46 centimeters) saplings of the trees for people to plant to help fight deforestation and climate change, according to USA Today.

The trees are actually clones of enormous redwoods that were cut down more than a century ago. But these hardy trees have kept sprouting shoots, from which these trees were cloned by Archangel Ancient Tree Archive, a non-profit group spearheading the project. "This is a first step toward mass production," David Milarch, the group's co-founder, told USA Today. The trees will be planted today (April 22), Earth Day, in Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain, Ireland, Canada, Germany and the United States.

The idea is that these trees, amongst the largest on record, are genetically superior to other redwoods (though some scientists disagree). And if all goes right, their descendants will grow large, one step toward creating forests and consuming carbon dioxide. "We need to reforest the planet; it's imperative. To do that, it just makes sense to use the largest, oldest, most iconic trees that ever lived," Milarch was quoted as saying.

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A new computer program detected a slow-motion decline, and subsequent revival, of forests in the Pacific Northwest in recent years. But what was behind this mysterious pattern? 

"It was, as it turns out, bugs," said Robert Kennedy, a remote sensing specialist at Boston University who designed the computer program, in a NASA statement.

Kennedy's program, called LandTrendr, can detect minute changes in the health of forests by analyzing wavelengths of light given off by the landscape and recorded in satellite images. Different types of vegetation reflect different wavelengths of light, often in ways that the naked eye can't detect.

In the case of the declining forests, Kennedy consulted with the U.S. Forest Service to confirm that the pattern of decline and rebirth detected by LandTrendr, and seen in several areas through the Northwest, was caused by mountain pine beetles. His program also detected a similar pattern of damage caused by the western spruce budworm.

Outbreaks of pine beetles have occurred in several areas, according to the release, including near Mount Hood in the 1980s, an outbreak that peaked in 1992 when the forest began to grow back. Another outbreak near Mount Rainier lasted 10 years, from its onset in 1994 until the insects killed all the trees and moved on in 2004. Pine beetles still pose a huge threat to forests throughout the West.

Kennedy's program also recognized a subtler decline of forests near these two mountains. Hiking to an area that seemed be in poor health based upon the program's analysis, Kennedy recently found an infestation of western spruce budworms. These insects eat the needles off of spruce trees. This won't kill trees immediately, but will if the insects return in following years, NASA reported.

LandTrendr is still in development, but has already changed the way the U.S. Forest Service monitors ecosystems in the Pacific Northwest, according to the NASA statement. Next, researchers aim to analyze the data in real-time, according to the release, so that, for example, they could contain an insect outbreak before it causes too much damage.

Reach Douglas Main at dmain@techmedianetwork.com. Follow him on Twitter @Douglas_Main. Follow OurAmazingPlanet on Twitter @OAPlanet. We're also on Facebook and Google+.

Deforestation could double the number of big floods in snowy regions in North America, a new study suggests.

Throughout the continent's interior, many creeks and rivers pick up their flow from melting snow that piles up in mountainous areas. And the size of the flows depends on both the amount of snow that falls upstream and how fast it melts.

Trees shade snow from the sunlight, keeping the white stuff cold and solid, but "as soon as you get rid of the trees, the snow melts faster," geoscientist Kim Green, of the University of British Columbia, said in a statement. "It’s that simple."

Green looked at a few decades worth of data from Camp Creek in British Columbia and Fool Creek in Colorado, in contrast with data on similar creeks in areas that had not been deforested. She also analyzed flood data generated by a computer model to study the simulated effect of deforestation over more than 90 years at Redfish Creek and 240 Creek, both in British Columbia.

Deforestation turned 10-year floods into three-to-five-year floods and 20-year floods into 10-to-12-year floods in all four creeks, Green found in her analysis. In 240 Creek, 50 year floods recurred every 13 years, the study showed.

Researchers have known that deforestation makes seasonal floods bigger on average, but the new study, published Oct. 2 in the journal Water Resources Research, shows it also increases the number of big floods over time.

Sandy Verry, a retired U.S. Forest Service hydrologist in Grand Rapids, Minn., who was not involved in the study, said he believes Green’s conclusions are reasonable. In a statement from the American Geophysical Union Verry said the model is "something that's going to be tested in other places many times, to see if their theory actually holds."

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Deforestation can significantly reduce rainfall in tropical areas and beyond, according to a study published today (Sept. 7) in the journal Nature.

Over a majority of the Earth's tropics, air passing over forested land produces twice as much rain as air passing over areas of sparse vegetation, the study found. Loss of forest cover can decrease levels of rainfall thousands of miles away.

Deforestation has already reduced rainfall in heavily populated areas adjacent to the Amazon and Congo rainforests, according to a statement from England's University of Leeds, whose researchers were part of the study.

If deforestation continues at current rates, rainfall across the Amazon basin could be reduced by more than 20 percent in the next 40 years, the study found.

"Our study implies that deforestation of the Amazon and Congo forests could have catastrophic consequences for the people living thousands of kilometers away in surrounding countries," study author and University of Leeds researcher Dominick Spracklen said in a statement.

For hundreds of years, researchers have debated whether vegetation increases rainfall. It's well-known that plants put moisture back into the air via evapotranspiration, the process by which leaves return water vapor to the atmosphere. But how much rainforestsproduce has been unclear. This is one of the first studies to quantify the rainmaking ability of large forests, according to the release.

The team used newly available NASA satellite observations of rainfall and vegetation, and a computer model that predicts atmospheric wind flow patterns, to explore the impact of the Earth's tropical forests.

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The city states of the ancient Mayan empire flourished in southern Mexico and northern Central America for about six centuries. Then, around A.D. 900 Mayan civilization disintegrated.

Two new studies examine the reasons for the collapse of the Mayan culture, finding the Mayans themselves contributed to the downfall of the empire. 

Scientists have found that drought played a key role, but the Mayans appear to have exacerbated the problem by cutting down the jungle canopy to make way for cities and crops, according to researchers who used climate-model simulations to see how much deforestation aggravated the drought.

"We're not saying deforestation explains the entire drought, but it does explain a substantial portion of the overall drying that is thought to have occurred," said the study's lead author Benjamin Cook, a climate modeler at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in a statement. [Dry and Dying: Images of Drought]

Using climate-model simulations, he and his colleagues examined how much the switch from forest to crops, such as corn, would alter climate. Their results, detailed online in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, suggested that when deforestation was at its maximum, it could account for up to 60 percent of the drying. (The switch from trees to corn reduces the amount of water transferred from the soil to the atmosphere, which reduces rainfall.)

Other recent research takes a more holistic view.

"The ninth-century collapse and abandonment of the Central Maya Lowlands in the Yucatán peninsular region were the result of complex human–environment interactions," writes this team in a study published Monday (Aug 20) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The team, led by B.L. Turner, a social scientist at Arizona State University, concurs that by clearing the forest, the Mayans may have aggravated a natural drought, which spiked about the time the empire came to an end and population declined dramatically.

But this is just one contributing factor to their demise, Turner and colleagues write, pointing out that the reconfiguration of the landscape may also have led to soil degradation. Other archaeological evidence points to a landscape under stress, for instance, the wood of the sapodilla tree, favored as construction beams, was no longer used at the Tikal and Calakmul sites beginning in A.D. 741. Larger mammals, such as white-tailed deer, appear to have declined at the end of empire.

Social and economic dynamics also contributed. Trade routes shifted from land transit across the Yucatán Peninsula to sea-born ships. This change may have weakened the city states, which were contending with environmental changes. Faced with mounting challenges, the ruling elites, a very small portion of the population, were no longer capable of delivering what was expected of them, and conflict increased.

"The old political and economic structure dominated by semidivine rulers decayed," the team writes. "Peasants, artisan – craftsmen, and others apparently abandoned their homes and cities to find better economic opportunities elsewhere in the Maya area."

Follow Wynne Parry on Twitter @Wynne_Parry or LiveScience @livescience. We're also on Facebook & Google+.

A new online tool allows people to access many of the images taken by NASA satellites over the last 13 years and to look at time-lapse videos of changes on the Earth's surface, such as deforestation and urban sprawl.

This new capability within the Google Earth Engine enhances the public's ability to view the massive amount of imagery collected by NASA's Landsat program between 1999 and 2011. Users can zoom in or out on any spot on the globe and move back and forth in time.

The new tool was created by Carnegie Mellon University, Google and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

For the past 40 years, the Landsat program has continuously collected  imagery of the Earth's surface and, since 2008, the USGS has made that imagery available free to the public. But accessing that data — measured in petabytes (there are 1 million gigabytes in a petabyte) — has long been cumbersome, according to a release from Carnegie Mellon University.

Now that 1.5 million of the images are stored in the Google Earth Engine, with more added every day, access is easier. Some of the videos have also been transformed into a set of seamless, "zoomable" videos easily accessible from a modern Web browser, according to the statement.

Carnegie Mellon scientist Randy Sargent said he predicts that the enhanced access to satellite imagery will help foster and ground public discussions regarding land use, urban sprawl, climate change and environmental policy. "You can continue to argue about why deforestation has happened, but you no longer will be able to argue whether it happened," he said in the statement.

Videos demonstrating how the time-lapse tool can be used to explore phenomena such as deforestation, urban growth and drying seas can be viewed at http://earthengine.google.org/#intro.

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The Amazon River

The Amazon River flows for more than 4,100 miles (6,600 km); within its hundreds of tributaries and streams are the largest number of freshwater fish species in the world.

Amazon Fisherman

About 30 million people live in the Amazon, including more than 300 indigenous groups, according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

Vast Rain Forest

The Amazon rain forest covers an area of 2.6 milloin square miles (6.7 million square kilometers), or twice the size of India, over eight countries: Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Suriname, Venezuela, plus French Guiana.

Frogs Delight

The tropical region is, as expected, warm and humid, with average temperatures of 82.2 (27.9 degrees Celsius) during the dry season and 78.4 F (25.8 C) during the rainy season – perfect for frogs like this Map Tree frog (Hypsiboas geographicus).

Jaguar Refuge

The Amazon is one of Earth's last refuges for numerous animals, including jaguars like this one. Jaguars are strong swimmers and climbers and require large areas to survive. However, according to WWF, hunting and habitat loss due to deforestatin threaten the survival of these marvelous cats.

Chillin' Sloth

A sloth at the edge of a forest in the Amazon.

Extinctions on the Way

Gloomy news? A study published in the July 13, 2012, issue of the journal Science found that with past deforestation and other threats to wildlife, more than 80 percent of species extinctions are still impending. Shown here, the stark forest edge of the Amazon.

Deforestation Damage

Slash and burn in the Amazon.

Burning Shows No Bounds

During the last half century, the seemingly endless Amazon has lost at least 17 percent of its forest cover, according to WWF. Shown here, a burnt Amazon forest.

When species lose their natural habitat to deforestation and other causes, they don't immediately disappear. Instead, they gradually die off over several generations, racking up an "extinction debt" that must eventually be paid in full. New research shows that the Brazilian Amazon has accrued a heavy vertebrate extinction debt, with more than 80 percent of extinctions expected from historical deforestation still impending.

While the results are alarming, this deathly time lag provides a conservation opportunity to save some of the disappearing species, scientists said, stressing that actions taken in the next few years are critical.

"Now that we know where the extinction debt is likely to be, we can go to the ground to restore habitat and take remedial actions to try to regenerate new habitats," said study lead author Robert Ewers, an ecologist at Imperial College London in the U.K. "We can try to put off ever having to pay that debt."

Extinction debt

The Brazilian Amazonis home to about 40 percent of the planet's tropical forests and a staggering amount of biodiversity. However, the Amazon's plant and animal species are under threat by deforestation, mostly due to agriculture and cattle ranging. [Stunning Photos of the Amazon]

Ewers and his colleagues set out to determine how many species would be lost from at least part of their historical habitats in the Amazon because of past and future deforestation. They began by looking at the "species-area relationship," a well-established ecological pattern describing how the number of species in a given habitat increases predictably as the habitat area increases. By turning this idea on its head, you can figure out how many species should go extinct as their habitat shrinks.

The researchers modeled the number of vertebrate species expected to go extinct within 31-mile by 31-mile blocks (50 by 50 kilometer blocks). They used a combination of deforestation data spanning back to 1970 and species-distribution maps of the Amazon. They compared their model's predictions with the actual number of extinctions seen thus far in the forest regions and found that 80 to 90 percent of the expected local extinctions have yet to happen, and many of them will occur in the southern and eastern regions of the Amazon.

Next, Ewers and his team used their model to estimate the magnitude of the local extinctions and extinction debts expected to occur in four scenarios, which mainly differ in their projections of future deforestation rates. Under the most likely scenario, every forest block will lose an average of about nine vertebrate speciesand be in debt for another 16 species by 2050.

And in all scenarios, species will continue to go extinct more than three decades after deforestation in the Amazon has stopped, if key forest areas are not restored, the researchers found.

"What we've seen in the last four decades is nothing like what we are going to see in the next four decades," Ewers told LiveScience.

Defaulting on the debt

Thiago Rangel, an ecologist at the Federal University of Goiás in Brazil who wasn't involved in the research, was surprised to see the Amazon's huge extinction debt. "Of course, that gives Brazil a very good opportunity for conservation measures," Rangel said. [10 Species You Can Kiss Goodbye]

Rangel, who wrote a perspective article accompanying the study published July 13 in the journal Science, pointed out that Brazil has made a lot of progress in reducing deforestation in the last decade. Moreover, the county has been expanding its network of protected areas — more than 50 percent of the Amazon is now under some form of environmental protection.

"But we are in the middle of a strong transition in Brazil from a very good and modern environmental legislation to something else," Rangel told LiveScience. Agricultural businesses, for example, have been lobbying for weaker forest protection codes — this past May, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff vetoed portions of such a bill, though this isn't likely the end of the debate, Rangel said.

Rangel stresses that Brazil must "default on its extinction debt," possibly by creating more conservation areas, particularly in places that have been abandoned by agriculturalists. Whatever the case, something needs to be done soon, he said.

Ewers agreed. "This problem has been building, and it will soon roll over and crash like a wave," he said.

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About 80,000 acres of intact forest in the heart of the Maya Biosphere Reserve in Guatemala will receive new protections thanks to a new agreement signed by the Wildlife Conservation Society, other conservation groups and several Guatemalan groups.

In the past few decades, the Maya Biosphere Reserve has faced growing threats from human activities including illegal logging, slash and burn agriculture, and ranching in protected areas, along with drug trafficking, poaching, and looting of Maya artifacts. 

In 2009, WCS and Conservation International began working with Guatemala's Protected Areas council to set up a conservation incentives payment system that had local communities design economic incentives to help stem deforestation. These "conservation agreements" are a contract between the local communities, the Guatemalan government, NGOs and donors.

This new agreement for the community of Carmelita is the third one in the Maya Biosphere Reserve.

"Conservation Agreements are a win-win for both the people and wildlife of the Maya Biosphere Reserve," said Julie Kunen, director of WCS's Latin America and Caribbean Program. "The agreements address pressing development needs and provide real incentives for the people living in and around the reserve to protect its animals and conserve its forests."

The Maya Biosphere Reserve, located in Petén, Guatemala, spans nearly 5 milllion acres and is home to some of the world's most important archaeological sites, as well as diverse ecosystems with a vast array of flora and fauna.

The new agreement with Carmelita, which is located in the center of the serve at the gateway to the renowned archaeological site of El Mirador, was signed on March 9.

An elusive monkey feared extinct has shown up in the remote forests of Borneo, posing for the first good pictures of the animal ever taken.

The mug shots reveal a furry Count Dracula of sorts, with the monkey's black head, face tipped with white whiskers and a pointy collar made of fluffy white fur.

The Miller's grizzled langur, an extremely rare primate that has suffered from habitat loss over the last 30 years, popped up unexpectedly in the protected Wehea Forest in east Kalimantan, Borneo.

"We knew we had found this primate that some people had speculated was potentially extinct," said study researcher Stephanie Spehar, a primatologist at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. "It was really exciting."

But the animal is still in grave danger, Spehar told LiveScience, and no one knows how many of these langurs are left. The researchers observed only two small groups of them.

Vanishing act

The shy monkey (Presbytis hosei canicrus) was seen in the 1970s in Kutai National Park in Borneo, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) from where the new population lives. But as the years passed, fires and illegal logging devastated Kutai. By 2008, the Miller's grizzled langur seems to have vanished from the park. A survey that year found just five langurs living on the Sangkulirang Peninsula in East Kalitmantan, also about 50 miles (80 km) away from the newly discovered langur habitat. But by 2010, that group of primates had also disappeared.

"At this point, we didn't know if this animal still existed or whether it was still hiding out in little pockets," Spehar said.

Spehar has been working in the Wehea Forest of Borneo for four years, but she'd never seen a Miller's grizzled langur there. Last summer, however, one of her undergraduate students camped out by a mineral lick area for 10 days, a spot where animals come to get nutrients from mineral-rich soil and water. The student, Eric Fell, was conducting his own research project on animals' use of these licks, and was photographing the creatures that dropped by. [Gallery: Elusive Wildlife Photos]

Upon returning from his stakeout, Fell showed Spehar his photographs. Among them were images of long-tailed, black-headed langurs.

"I knew this was something special," Spehar said. "I knew that it was something that was unexpected and we hadn't seen before."

Monkey reborn

Spehar, who credits the find to the work of local communities and governments that protect the forest and support her research, showed the photos to another researcher working in the woods, the director of the conservation organization Ethical Expeditions Brent Loken. The revelation surprised both parties: It turned out that Loken's group had also been staking out a mineral lick 5 miles (8 km) away from Fell's with a motion-triggered camera. They'd captured an image of the same type of primate. [Video of the monkeys]

"We realized that we had basically rediscovered this animal," Spehar said. Taxonomists confirmed the find as a Miller's grizzled langur. The researchers reported their find today (Jan. 20) in the American Journal of Primatology.

The simultaneous discovery suggests that there is a decent-size population of the langurs in Wehea, but Spehar cautioned that incredibly little is known about the species. No one knows how wide the langurs' range is, she said, how many there are, or their population density. That lack of knowledge isn't uncommon for many threatened species, according to Loken.

"This monkey represents a lot of species on the planet that we know very little about," Loken told LiveScience. "We don't know how many there are, we don't know where they live, what ecological requirements they need to live, and unless we get some of that information quickly, some of these species could slip into extinction before we know anything about them, or even realize that they're gone."

While Wehea itself is a more than 98,000-acre (40,000-hectare) oasis of protection, it is surrounded by forest used for logging, palm oil plantations and mining — the same sort of human uses that presumably drove the langurs out of the habitats where they once thrived. Additionally, the forest is only protected by the local community, Loken said, not the central government.

That makes the future of the Miller's grizzled langur very uncertain, Spehar said. She and her colleagues plan to conduct further research into the monkey's range and behavior to understand how best to save it from extinction. Meanwhile, Loken's group and others are working to secure extra protection for the forest.

"What we hope to do is to work with companies and concessions and with local governments to ensure this animal's protection," Spehar said. "That's the only way we will ensure that it doesn't disappear."

You can follow LiveScience senior writer Stephanie Pappas on Twitter @sipappas. Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and on Facebook.

This ScienceLives article was provided to LiveScience in partnership with the National Science Foundation.

Robert Walker is a professor of Geography at Michigan State University, with a Ph.D. in Regional Science from the University of Pennsylvania. He grew up in Florida, where he learned to value the wilds of nature, but also saw the price of poorly planned development. Walker studies land-cover change, and in particular the loss of tropical forests in Amazonia. His research approach is one of "boots on the ground," and he draws intellectual nourishment from grueling field campaigns in Amazonia (the Amazon rain forests). In conducting his research, Walker has spoken with thousands of frontier residents, including farmers, ranchers, loggers, gold-miners, Indians and fellow adventurers. In the process, he's traveled by jeep down many of the roads in the region, logging thousands of miles. Walker cannot imagine a summer without an opportunity to rough-it south of the border, but he is always thankful to return home to his wife and family in Michigan, and the rejuvenating waters of the Great Lakes. Read Walker's response to the ScienceLives 10 questions below.

Name: Robert Walker Age: 59 Institution: Michigan State University Field of Study: Geography and Environment

What inspired you to choose this field of study? I was inspired to study environmental problems by my personal experiences with environmental degradation in the State of Florida, where I grew up. I saw firsthand the obliteration of pine flatlands, mesic hammocks, mangrove estuaries, and coral reefs, and I could never understand why people would want to exchange the wildness of the landscape for a built environment. I also witnessed the channelization of the Kissimmee River to make way for Disney World, which seemed completely illegitimate to me as a child. Through the 1950s and 1960s, I saw Florida change from a beautiful tropical-subtropical paradise to a land of strip malls, theme parks and modular housing. It was enough to make me care, and leave. I know that people need to impose on nature for subsistence and livelihood. I also know that they need nature for other purposes. 

What is the best piece of advice you ever received? My best piece of advice was that one must never give up, or admit defeat, in pursuing a cherished objective. Someone once told me that success is the ability to persist in the face of continuous failure. This is my motto, and it has sustained me through proposal review cycles, manuscript rejections, and sleepless nights wondering where the funds will come from to continue my work.   

What was your first scientific experiment as a child? My first scientific experiment involved a science fair project examining the life cycle of shipworms. When all of them died in my aquarium, I changed my experiment to a study of the link between mortality and salinity.

What is your favorite thing about being a researcher? My favorite thing about being a researcher is being allowed to let my mind wander, and to see patterns and symmetry that I hadn't seen the day before. I often wake in the morning, wondering what new insights will greet me through the course of the day. I have the same sensation when sitting down to a manuscript in preparation, knowing that a blank page is also a field of thought, and therefore a pleasure. A researcher's life is a life of continuous imagination.

What is the most important characteristic a researcher must demonstrate in order to be an effective researcher? The most important characteristic is persistence, combined with single-minded purpose. Intelligence plays a role, but much less than one might imagined.

What are the societal benefits of your research? The societal benefits of my research are that it affords insight into a process of environmental change of global concern, namely the loss of our tropical forests. To be effective in addressing problems, policy must be based on an understanding of the human beings whose actions lie at their root. This is especially so with deforestation, for trees hardly fall down in massive clear-cuts of their own volition. Environmental policy, in this case, must incentivize people away from such actions, which can only be done if it is known why they engage in them in the first place. 

Who has had the most influence on your thinking as a researcher? I can mention three people here. The first was Howard Odum, the ecologist, who taught me that the world is a system of systems of systems, ad infinitum. The second was Daniel Vining, a social scientist at the University of Pennsylvania. He taught me to question everything and assume nothing, to approach problems from the ground up, to distrust received wisdom. The third was Ronald Miller, an operations research specialist, also at the University of Pennsylvania. He taught me mathematics, and gave me the desire to translate what I saw into logical structures.

What about your field or being a researcher do you think would surprise people the most? I think it would surprise people to realize how little is actually known about the world we live in, that there are research frontiers in every direction. I think it would also surprise people to realize that methodology is hardly fixed, that scientific approaches all have a seat-of-the pants component, that guess work and inspiration play huge roles in any scientific endeavor. I remember talking with a politician maybe ten years ago about deforestation. He was astonished when I told him there was controversy about rates of forest loss. He assumed that because it was such a global problem, the science would have been completely nailed down, end of story. He wasn't that interested in learning about measurement error, or problems with cloud-cover, either. Not to mention all the disagreements about what was causing the problem.   

If you could only rescue one thing from your burning office or lab, what would it be? I would quickly download all of my manuscripts and data onto an external drive, and run like hell. I know I'm only allowed to take one thing here, but on my dash from the office I'd also grab an armful of Brazilian books, documents, and maps that are impossible to come by in libraries or stores in the United States, stuff it's taken me years to collect through opportune encounters, or purchases in remote places.

What music do you play most often in your lab or car? I play Brega, which is a working-class Brazilian music from the Amazonian gold-mines. It's fast-paced and rather raunchy, and would never be aired in the United States if the songs were sung in English, because the lyrics can be crude. In fact, Brega is slang for "low-class." But, the music's great, whether by Banda Calypso, Banda da Lourinha or even Fruta Sensual.

To learn more about Walker's research in the Amazon, check out this National Science Foundation article and an article in the Michigan State University Alumni Magazine. Watch a video below describing Walker's research and experiences in the Amazon.

Editor's Note: This research was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the federal agency charged with funding basic research and education across all fields of science and engineering. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. See the ScienceLives archive.

This Research in Action article was provided to LiveScience in partnership with the National Science Foundation.

Despite improved conservation efforts, the Amazon rain forest faces environmental threats from deforestation.

Researchers are investigating deforestation activities and the role played by building roads in the region — finding the answers is no simple task and requires first-hand exploration of the Amazon forests and the roads themselves.

Up for the challenge are the collaborating researchers Robert Walker of Michigan State University, project leader Eugenio Arima (who at the time was an assistant professor of Environmental Studies at Hobart William and Smith Colleges, and is now moving to the University of Texas at Austin), and Ritaumaria Pereira, a doctoral candidate in Geography at Michigan State University.

With support from the National Science Foundation, the team journeyed along the "Trans-Amazon Highway," one of the longest highways in Brazil, to search for loggers and survey links between forest degradation and development (see video below).

Before embarking on the highway, the team met with the local Kayapó Indians who provided key information about logging activity in the lower Amazon basin. The Kayapó once allowed loggers on their land, but after negative consequences, such as land damage and tribal conflict, the Kayapó now support efforts to conserve land.

The 850-mile journey along the Trans-Amazon Highway began at the village of Santarém, where the researchers rented a jeep and headed west to the terminus, the town of Labrea. Along the way, the researchers observed a multitude of wildlife, including a "macaw city" where numerous rare blue macaws buzzed around the researchers.

Deep in the forest, the researchers found an active gold mine, plagued with malaria. The barren landscape of the mine was dry with sandy crevices dispersed throughout — a reminder of what the rain forest could become if it was completely cut down.

Along the Aripuanã River, the team found what they initially set out to discover — evidence of the active logging industry. Numerous logging trucks carrying sawed wood appeared to be coming from the direction of the nearby frontier town of Vila Santo Antonio Matupi. The team attempted to interview the loggers, but such a task is not so simple, as loggers are often armed and suspicious of strangers. Although the loggers were not open to discussions, the team hopes to develop alternative strategies to interview them in the future.

The team continued their journey along the final stretch of the Trans-Amazon, which proved to be the most difficult. Walker explained that the road conditions were particularly wet and isolated. If you were to get stuck, you would have to make sure the windows were shut while you slept, or else jaguars might pay a visit.

Despite the challenges, after nine days the team safely completed their trip. Through their journey, the team located the "logging frontier" in Brazil and learned about the groups that are involved in agricultural development, such as settlers, ranchers and local governments.

They also investigated how sprawling road construction fragments the forest as well.

From those findings, the team determined that certain patterns of fragmentation are especially sustainable. The "fishbone" pattern, for instance, which resembles the bone structure of a fish, offers a solution that merges sustainable development with forest livelihood. In that pattern, the "bone-like" formations represent roads and the space between each road, or "bone," provides space for animal movement and a network of connected ecosystems. That form of forest fragmentation allows for sustainable development if properly planned, and safeguarded.

To learn more about these findings, check out an NSF "Discovery" article and a MSU Alumni Magazine article about the team's trip to the Amazon.

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. See the Research in Action archive.

Madagascar, the fourth-largest island in the world, has proved to be a taxonomist's dream in recent years. Since 1999, on a nearly weekly basis, scientists have uncovered a parade of 615 new species — from the colorful and cuddly to the downright bizarre.

The world's smallest primate, Berthe’s mouse lemur, a creature teeny enough to perch inside a shot glass at 3.5 inches (9 centimeters) tall and weighing in at just an ounce (30 grams), and a lizard that wears a tree-bark disguise are among the standouts of the hundreds of species to debut, all compiled in a new report from the conservation organization WWF. [See some of the amazing species discovered.]

And although some new species are more charismatic than others (a yam isn't quite as photogenic as a lemur), Nanie Ratsifandrihamanana, WWF Madagascar's conservation director, said it's hard to pick a favorite.

"All the species are so special, and many are unique to Madagascar," Ratsifandrihamanana told OurAmazingPlanet. "They don't exist anywhere else in the world."

Treasure trove of species

The island's treasure trove of unique species stems from its relative isolation. Madagascar has been separated from Africa and the Indian subcontinent for the last 80 million to 100 million years, allowing its plant and animal residents to evolve into fantastical forms. About 70 percent of its species are unseen anywhere else on the planet.

In total over the last 12 years, researchers have identified 17 fish, 41 mammals, 61 reptiles, 69 amphibians, 42 invertebrates and 385 plants new to science since 1999. And the pace of discovery shows no signs of slowing.

In fact, due to growing scientific interest in Madagascar's denizens, and thanks to technological advances that allow for faster identification, such as DNA coding, Ratsifandrihamanana said the onslaught of new species described could continue or even increase.

But the news isn't all good.

"The sad part is that there could be many species that will disappear before they are discovered," she said.

Many of the creatures discovered are already endangered  and are losing habitat quickly.

Disappearing forests

Madagascar's forests, home to many of its unique species, were cleared at a rate of about 2 percent a year from 1950 to 1990. According to WWF, the island has lost 90 percent of its original forest cover.

That's because humans depend on the island's forests, too. About 80 percent of the Malagasy population uses wood as its main source of energy.

In addition, large swaths of forest are cleared for subsistence farming.

Although Ratsifandrihamanana said the rate of deforestation was cut in half from 1990 to 2005, the last year for which figures are available, she said it remains a serious problem.

"We're really trying to empower local communities so they are better managers of the resources, because they are the ones who make the daily decisions for how they will use the forest," Ratsifandrihamanana said, adding that one major piece of the puzzle is improving the population's economic situation.

The country is one of the poorest on the planet, and a 2009 coup further complicated the nation's already bleak financial situation. Since the political upheaval, international funding for the country's environmental program was cut off, and there's been an increase in trafficking in exotic animals and prized, rare trees.

However, despite its troubles, Ratsifandrihamanana said WWF and other international organizations continue conservation efforts on a local level in Madagascar.

"It's an extraordinary place," Ratsifandrihamanana said. "We need a lot of support now for the environment."

 Andrea Mustain is a staff writer for OurAmazingPlanet, a sister site to LiveScience. Reach her at amustain@techmedianetwork.com. Follow her on Twitter @AndreaMustain.

FORTALEZA, Brazil Ranchers in the Brazilian Amazon are threatening to poison jaguars and pumas attacking their livestock, after the elusive big cats' habitat was destroyed by a nearby dam.

The farmers in Rondônia state say the big cats have invaded their properties since construction began on Jirau dam, one of two controversial hydroelectric projects recently approved on the Madeira River, a major Amazon tributary.

They believe the animals are fleeing the deforestation caused by the construction of the dam and preparations for flooding around 250 square kilometers of forest upstream.

"I've lost 10 sheep since November," landowner Almino Brasil told the online newspaper Tudorondonia.

Another rancher, requesting anonymity, said, "It's clear there was a huge mistake in the environmental handling of this dam. Before clearing the forest, they should have moved the jaguars to some wildlife reserve.

"But what did they do? Just put down their chainsaws in the habitat of these animals they had no alternative except to seek refuge and food in the properties of the region.

"The fact is that before the dam, we did not have this problem around here."

Wary of attracting attention by shooting the cats, a group of ranchers in the region is reported to be planning to exterminate the jaguars and pumas using poison.

Almino Brasil does not approve of the drastic solution being proposed by some fellow landowners, but he understands it.

"The jaguar is being molested in its own habitat and invading ranches and killing animals is just instinctive," he said. "But the reaction of rural landowners is understandable, even if it is disproportionate. They are suffering damage and in some cases, they are having their livelihoods threatened by these creatures."

Ingrid Eder, Brazil campaign manager for the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA), told OurAmazingPlanet: "WSPA condemns this attitude. The habitat of the jaguars was destroyed, and they are only going onto the farms to hunt because they have no other way of getting food."

And the problem isn't limited to the region around this particular dam.

"This situation is happening in various regions of the country, where big cats end up hunting domestic animals for their survival, due to loss of their natural habitat," Eder said.

Eder suggested a solution: "One way of remedying the problem is to compensate the farmers the company could buy each animal killed by the jaguars, so the farmers would not suffer any loss."

The normally elusive jaguar, Pantheraonca, is the largest member of the cat family in the Americas. Although it has a very wide range , stretching from Mexico to Argentina, much of its habitat has been severely fragmented and the species is classified as near-threatened by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. The Amazon is its last major stronghold.

The puma or cougar, Puma concolor, is found throughout the Americas and is not of conservation concern.

The Jirau and São Antonio dams on the Madeira River were approved by the Brazilian government amid huge controversy between 2007 and 2009. Brazil's upstream neighbor, Bolivia, has expressed concern about possible impacts on the river and its resources. The dams will start generating electricity next year.

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