The Amazon Rio Branco Basin

Paper Summary:

The writer illuminates some of the issues that are causing damage to the rainforest of Brazil while giving a history of the region. The paper argues that the impoverished farmers have no choice but to enact farming policies that are slowly killing the surrounding lands, thus putting the ecosystem in peril.

Table of Contents:
Introduction
Poisons From Promise
Eventualities
Conclusion

From the Paper:

"The Amazon may come to resemble many of the world's river basins that have drainage networks that have been channelized and cut off from the floodplains, agricultural lands that have been "reclaimed" from wetlands, and large loads of fertilizers and anthropogenic chemicals in the surface water. In the Amazon the most likely change is an increase in intensive agriculture. High-phosphate fertilizers are already used to reclaim abandoned pastures. The use of fertilizers in areas near the streams could add nutrients and increase productivity in local surface water. The use of fertilizers and pesticides on the floodplains of white-water rivers, the best agricultural land in the basin, would add chemicals directly into those ecosystems."

More papers on The Amazon Rio Branco Basin:

• Case Study # 146823 : "The Amazon.com Business Model"
• Essay # 47231 : "Cattle Ranchers and the Amazon Rain Forest"
• Research Paper # 91749 : "Deforestation in the Amazon"

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