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Susanna B. Hecht is an American geographer, professor of Urban Planning at UCLA and professor of international history at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva.
Her early work on the deforestation of the Amazon led to the founding of the subfield of political ecology. This subfield of geography embraces sociology, economics, history, literature, ecology, environmental studies and a wide variety of other fields in an effort to paint a more intricate picture of a particular geographic region and the influence it has on the world around it as well as how the world impacts the region. [1] The Amazon rain forest is her primary subject of inquiry and she is the co-author of the book, Fate of the Forest: Destroyers, Developers and Defenders of the Amazon with Alexander Cockburn, originally published in 1990, but which has been updated and reissued by the University of Chicago Press in 2010. In 2004, Fate of the Forest was named one of the most influential books in cultural geography by the American Association of Geography. The book has become a classic text in environmental studies, and has won numerous awards. She is widely considered a preeminent authority on forest transition and sustainable agriculture. In addition to her academic work, she has also written popular articles for the Nation, [2] New Left Review and Fortune magazine. [3]
Hecht received her A.B. from the University of Chicago and her Ph.D. in Geography from the University of California, Berkeley. [4] She was awarded the prestigious John Simon Guggenheim fellowship in 2008 and has received fellowships and grants from NASA, the National Science Foundation, The Pew Charitable Trust, the MacArthur Foundation, The Ford Foundation, and many others. She has also been a resident fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and the Center for the Advanced Study of the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.
In 2018, she was awarded the David Livingstone Centenary Medal of the American Geographical Society. [5]
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The Amazon River in South America is the largest river by discharge volume of water in the world, and the disputed longest river system in the world in comparison to the Nile.
Political ecology is the study of the relationships between political, economic and social factors with environmental issues and changes. Political ecology differs from apolitical ecological studies by politicizing environmental issues and phenomena.
The Amazon rainforest, Amazon jungle or Amazonia is a moist broadleaf tropical rainforest in the Amazon biome that covers most of the Amazon basin of South America. This basin encompasses 7,000,000 km2 (2,700,000 sq mi), of which 5,500,000 km2 (2,100,000 sq mi) are covered by the rainforest. This region includes territory belonging to nine nations and 3,344 formally acknowledged indigenous territories.
Tropical rainforests are rainforests that occur in areas of tropical rainforest climate in which there is no dry season – all months have an average precipitation of at least 60 mm – and may also be referred to as lowland equatorial evergreen rainforest. True rainforests are typically found between 10 degrees north and south of the equator ; they are a sub-set of the tropical forest biome that occurs roughly within the 28-degree latitudes. Within the World Wildlife Fund's biome classification, tropical rainforests are a type of tropical moist broadleaf forest that also includes the more extensive seasonal tropical forests.
Euclides da Cunha was a Brazilian journalist, sociologist and engineer. His most important work is Os Sertões, a non-fictional account of the military expeditions promoted by the Brazilian government against the rebellious village of Canudos, known as the War of Canudos.
Terra preta is a type of very dark, fertile anthropogenic soil (anthrosol) found in the Amazon Basin. It is also known as "Amazonian dark earth" or "Indian black earth". In Portuguese its full name is terra preta do índio or terra preta de índio. Terra mulata is lighter or brownish in color.
The Kayapo people are the indigenous people in Brazil who inhabit a vast area spreading across the states of Pará and Mato Grosso, south of the Amazon River and along Xingu River and its tributaries. This pattern has given rise to the nickname the Xingu tribe. They are one of the various subgroups of the great Mebêngôkre nation. The term "Kayapo" is used by neighbouring groups rather than the Kayapo themselves. They refer to outsiders as "Poanjos".
Forest transition refers to a geographic theory describing a reversal or turnaround in land-use trends for a given territory from a period of net forest area loss to a period of net forest area gain. The term "landscape turnaround" has also been used to represent a more general recovery of natural areas that is independent of biome type.
Darrell Addison Posey was an American anthropologist and biologist who vitalized the study of traditional knowledge of indigenous and folk populations in Brazil and other countries. He called his approach ethnobiology and combined research with respect for other cultures, especially indigenous intellectual property rights.
The Amazon rubber boom was an important part of the economic and social history of Brazil and Amazonian regions of neighboring countries, being related to the extraction and commercialization of rubber. Centered in the Amazon Basin, the boom resulted in a large expansion of European colonization in the area, attracting immigrant workers, generating wealth, causing cultural and social transformations, and wreaking havoc upon indigenous societies. It encouraged the growth of cities such as Manaus and Belém, capitals within the respective Brazilian states of Amazonas and Pará, among many other cities throughout the region like Itacoatiara, Rio Branco, Eirunepé, Marabá, Cruzeiro do Sul and Altamira; as well as the expansion of Iquitos in Peru, Cobija in Bolivia and Leticia in Colombia. The rubber boom occurred largely between 1879 and 1912. There was heightened rubber production and associated activities again from 1942 to 1945 during the Second World War.
The Treaty of Badajoz was signed by Spain and Portugal on 6 June 1801. Portugal ceded the border town of Olivenza to Spain and closed its ports to British military and commercial shipping.
The 1801 Treaty of Madrid was signed on 29 September 1801 by Portugal and France. Portugal made territorial concessions to France in Northern Brazil, closed its ports to British shipping and paid an indemnity of 20 million francs.
The Amazon rainforest is the largest rainforest in the world, covering an area of 3,000,000 km2. It represents over half of the planet's rainforests and comprises the largest and most biodiverse tract of tropical rainforest in the world. This region includes territory belonging to nine nations. The majority of the forest is contained within Brazil, with 60%, followed by Peru with 13%, Colombia with 10%, and with minor amounts in Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana.
William Maxfield Denevan is an American geographer. He is professor emeritus of Geography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is a prominent member of the Berkeley School of cultural-historical geography. He also worked in the Latin American Center and the Institute for Environmental Studies at Wisconsin. His research interests are in the historical ecology of the Americas, especially Amazonia and the Andes.
Paulinho Paiakan was a leader of the Kayapo people, an indigenous tribe of Brazil. He led the Kayapo in their protests against destruction of the Amazon rainforest.
A várzea forest is a seasonal floodplain forest inundated by whitewater rivers that occurs in the Amazon biome. Until the late 1970s, the definition was less clear and várzea was often used for all periodically flooded Amazonian forests.
Bertha Koiffmann Becker was a Brazilian geographer, author and professor emeritus at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. She published more than 180 books, articles, and other works during her career. Much of her research dealt with issues affecting the Amazon rainforest and surrounding regions, as well as the political geography of Brazil. She helped develop new public policies for the Brazilian Ministry of Science and Technology. She spoke as a panelist at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development Rio+20 in 2012.
Deforestation is a primary contributor to climate change. Land use changes, especially in the form of deforestation, are the second largest anthropogenic source of atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions, after fossil fuel combustion. Greenhouse gases are emitted during combustion of forest biomass and decomposition of remaining plant material and soil carbon. Global models and national greenhouse gas inventories give similar results for deforestation emissions. As of 2019, deforestation is responsible for about 11% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Carbon emissions from tropical deforestation are accelerating. Growing forests are a carbon sink with additional potential to mitigate the effects of climate change. Some of the effects of climate change, such as more wildfires, may increase deforestation. Deforestation comes in many forms: wildfire, agricultural clearcutting, livestock ranching, and logging for timber, among others. The vast majority of agricultural activity resulting in deforestation is subsidized by government tax revenue. Forests cover 31% of the land area on Earth and annually 75,700 square kilometers of the forest is lost. According to the World Resources Institute, there was a 12% increase in the loss of primary tropical forests from 2019 to 2020. Mass deforestation continues to threaten tropical forests, their biodiversity, and the ecosystem services they provide. The main area of concern of deforestation is in tropical rain forests since they are home to the majority of the planet's biodiversity.
The Amazon biome contains the Amazon rainforest, an area of tropical rainforest, and other ecoregions that cover most of the Amazon basin and some adjacent areas to the north and east. The biome contains blackwater and whitewater flooded forest, lowland and montane terra firma forest, bamboo and palm forest, savanna, sandy heath and alpine tundra. Some areas are threatened by deforestation for timber and to make way for pasture or soybean plantations.
Ana Maria Duran Calisto is an Ecuadorean architect, urbanist, and environmental planner who founded Estudio A0 with her husband and partner the architect Jaskran "Jazz" Kalirai in Quito, Ecuador.
