| Because forests are complex, globally distributed ecosystems, remote sensing provides a valuable means for monitoring them. Satellite data have been used to determine the rate of deforestation in Brazil's Legal Amazon. The majority of deforestation measured thus far has been has been done by clear cutting, burning for pasture, and subsistence farming. An apparently new phenomenon occurring in Brazil's tropical forests is selective logging; generally, selective logging can be detected with Landsat TM data, although it is sometimes camouflaged by the crowns of the residual trees and can be misclassified as undisturbed forest in most classification techniques. A 1988 estimate for deforestation reported by Skole and Tucker (1993) and subsequent analyses by researchers at Michigan State University and Institudo national de Pesquisas Espaciais do not include selectively logged areas. The purpose of this study is to quantify the area of selective logging missed in previous deforestation estimates. It is the first basin-wide study, finding 5,309 km 2 of selective logging in the 1992 Landsat TM images. |