ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

Environmental Issues



Environmental Issues

The article, Forests and Drugs: Coca driven Deforestation in Tropical Biodiversity Hotspots is written by a team of writers including Liliana and Adriana. This article highlights the major aspects of nature and environment regarding the deforestation and drugs. The article identifies the drivers of deforestation in the tropical biodiversity hotspots. This has been a crucial measure to analyze the threats that may be posed to the specific species and ecosystem. The study also undertakes to examine the proactive plans for the purpose of conservation. Numerous cover changes have been assessed in the current article that have taken place between the years 2002 and 2007 in the regions of Chocó, northern Andes, Amazon forests of Colombia, and the places that have been the largest producers, and ultimately the suppliers, of the coca leaf for the cocaine market globally. The adverse impacts of the illicit crops on the dynamics of forest have been quantified, and the protected areas and their effectiveness have been evaluated in this regard leading towards the determination of the effects of elimination on the deforestation.

The study mentions that a large fraction of the biodiversity of the world is located in the hotspots, which refer to those areas that breed and support an unbalanced quantity of the endemic species. There is an intensely threatening topical forest and biodiversity ecosystem, which is prevailing in these hotspots. Various cover changes have been assessed in the current article that have taken place between the years 2002 and 2007 in the regions of Chocó, northern Andes, Amazon forests of Colombia (Heath, Binswanger,1998). Though, the synthesis of the patterns of global deforestation and uncovering of its methods has become difficult, there is a close linkage between the resource booms, agricultural markets and roads to enhance the impacts and occurrences of the deforestation. The changes in the policy regimes are connected to the roads and markets that are established to supply these resources and they also influence the demands for the fossil fuels, agricultural products, and various other natural resources.

The experimental section of this study involves the use of land cover maps which generate the detection of the cultivation of coca during the time period between 2002 and 2007. The images were preprocessed and modified in order to eliminate any terrain and topographic distortions and were corrected using the ERS radar images. The categorization of these land cover maps was validated through conducting the small aircraft or helicopter reconnaissance flights in 4 kinds of areas which included (i) approximately 75% of the historical coca cultivation areas, (ii) new sites reported to have been cultivated for coca, (iii) reports of the elimination through the aerial fumigation, and (iv) the regions with the dense cloud cover in the remote sensing images. However, these surveillances and surveys failed to detect the coca that was grown under the shades. Moreover, on restricted scopes, on-the-ground detection of the remote sensing data was also undertaken (Angrist, Kugler, 2008). In order to assess the conservation policy and coca ...