Vines overtaking the American tropics

Contact: Beth King, kingb@si.edu, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute 14 Feb 2011 Sleeping Beauty’s kingdom was overgrown by vines when she fell into a deep sleep. Researchers at the Smithsonian in Panama and the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee received more than a million dollars from the U.S. National Science Foundation to discover why real vines […]

Ecuador court orders Chevron to pay $8 billion for massive environmental damage in the Amazon

February 14, 2011 (Reuters) – A court in Ecuador’s Amazon jungle ordered Chevron Corp to pay more than $8 billion in damages on Monday in a closely watched environmental suit, the plaintiffs’ lawyer said. But the U.S. oil company vowed to appeal, meaning the long-running case dating from drilling in the South American nation during […]

2 severe Amazon droughts in 5 years alarm scientists – ‘A grim future for Amazonia’

Contact: Hannah Isom, h.isom@leeds.ac.uk, University of Leeds3 Feb 2011(University of Leeds) New research shows that the 2010 Amazon drought may have been even more devastating to the region’s rainforests than the unusual 2005 drought, which was previously billed as a one-in-100 year event. Analyses of rainfall across 5.3 million square kilometres of Amazonia during the […]

Graph of the Day: Percent of Normal Precipitation in Brazil, Summer 2010

By Nick Sundt11/23/2010 The Amazon region is experiencing the third extreme drought in a dozen years — and it may turn out to be the worst on record. The droughts coupled with recent research findings, suggest that rising atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases will rapidly increase the frequency and severity of droughts in the region. […]

Image of the Day: Record Low Rio Negro Viewed from Orbit

 Rio Negro, 9 December 2008     Rio Negro, 10 December 2010 By Holli RiebeekDecember 11, 2010 Widespread, severe drought gripped much of the Amazon Basin in 2010, straining the network of water that makes up the Amazon River. By December 3, one of the Amazon’s largest tributaries, the Negro River, reached a record-low 13.63 […]

Another extreme drought hits the Amazon, raising climate change concerns

By Joe Romm November 26, 2010 We know from simple on-the-ground knowledge that the 2010 drought was extreme, leading to record lows on some major rivers in the Amazon region and an upsurge in the number of forest fires. Preliminary analyses suggest that the 2010 drought was more widespread and severe than the 2005 event. […]

Drought brings Amazon tributary to lowest level in a century

By Tom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro, www.guardian.co.ukTuesday 26 October 2010 04.25 BST One of the most important tributaries of the Amazon river has fallen to its lowest level in over a century, following a fierce drought that has isolated tens of thousands of rainforest inhabitants and raised concerns about the possible impact of climate […]

Brazil to privatize large blocks of Amazon rainforest for logging

www.mongabay.comOctober 12, 2010 Brazil will auction large blocks of the Amazon rainforest to private timber companies as part of an effort to reduce demand for illegal logging, reports Reuters. The government will grant 1 million hectares (2.5 million acres) of logging concessions by the end of the year, according to Antonio Carlos Hummel, head of […]

Video: Chevron toxic waste pits in Ecuador rainforest

Monday, October 11, 2010 A couple of months ago, I traveled with my Amazon Watch colleagues Mitch and Kevin into the Ecuadorian Amazon, where we met up with our friend Donald, an activist with the Amazon Defense Coalition. In this video, Mitch and Donald illustrate Chevron’s toxic legacy in Ecuador, in the form of one […]

Chevron faces tens of billions in clean-up costs – Potential death toll estimated to be 10,000 in Ecuador rainforest

Contact: Karen Hinton at 703-798-3109 or Karen@hintoncommunications.com  17 September 2010 Lago Agrio, Ecuador (September 17) – A group of highly respected American technical and medical experts, using conservative assumptions, have concluded that it could cost Chevron up to tens of billions of dollars to clean up oil waste discharged into Ecuador’s rainforest and compensate local […]

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