In some cases, up to half of these losses were attributed to disturbance, rather than just forest losses. The researchers observed that even areas containing 80 percent of their primary forests, according to Brazilian code, lost between 39 and 54 percent of their conservation value in terms of biodiversity losses. And now, a new study is calling attention to yet another way human activity can harm the forest and its inhabitants. They assumed that any differences in the predicted and real-life values were caused by additional disturbances in that area. The researchers developed a mathematical system for figuring out how severely an area has been affected by disturbances.

Source: Washington Post June 29, 2016 17:18 UTC