Deforestation Follows a Road Through Ucayali
Deforestation Follows a Road Through Ucayali
August 21, 2022
A thin brown line east of the Ucayali River snakes through an expanse of green rainforest in eastern Peru. The road—originally called OX1 and now UC-105—first appears in Landsat satellite imagery in 1987. Landsat images indicate that the surrounding forest stayed mostly intact for more than two decades, despite the activity of oil and logging companies.
But starting in 2017, large clearings have sprung up on either side of the road, and networks of smaller roads connected to it have pushed deeper into the rainforest. “The pace of change in the past five years is staggering,” said David Salisbury, a University of Richmond professor who has been doing field work in the region for decades. “It’s also a preview of what is to come if this road is paved and extends all the way to Puerto Breu. Most of the deforestation in the Amazon rainforest happens within 5 kilometers (3 miles) of roads.”
The pair of satellite images above show the extent of the change between the Ucayali and Genepanshea rivers. The first image, acquired by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8, shows the area in 2017, when just the road and a modest amount of deforestation were visible. By 2022, deforested areas had proliferated, in part due to the arrival of a new wave of land speculators, coca farms, ranches, and even small airstrips, explained Salisbury.
The original road, first established by an oil company in the late-1980s, connected Nueva Italia’s port on the Ucayali River with wells drilled near the Sheshea and Tamaya Rivers. The company abandoned the road after a few years and vegetation had started to grow over it. But starting in 1999, a logging company began to reestablish, widen, and extend the road. Over the next decade, a network of trails spread outward from the main road as loggers harvested mahogany and cedar from the area, transporting the timber to the Ucayali River and floating it to the Peruvian city of Pucallpa.
More:
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/150513/deforestation-follows-a-road-through-ucayali