Tropical deforestation in the Bolivian Amazon

Abstract

Landsat satellite images from the mid-1980s and early 1990s were used tomap tropical forest extent and deforestation in similar to 800,000 km(2)of Amazonian Bolivia. Forest cover extent, including tropical deciduousforest, totaled 472,000 km(2) while the area of natural non-forestformations totaled 298,000 km(2). The area deforested totaled 15,000km(2) in the middle 1980s and 28,800 km(2) by the early 1990s. The rateof tropical deforestation in the >1,000 mm y(-1) precipitation forestzone of Bolivia was 2,200 km(2) y(-1) from 1985-1986 to 1992-1994. Wedocument a spatially-concentrated ``deforestation zone{''} in Santa CruzDepartment where >60% of the Bolivian deforestation is occurring at anaccelerating rate in areas of tropical deciduous dry forest.