sustainable forestry in the Brazilian Amazon

The question of sustainable forestry is one that has both socioeconomic and environmental/biological aspects. If you're interested in these things, you might want to look at a journal such as Forest Ecology and Management and, in particular, at an article in Vol.256, No.7, which deals specifically with sustainable forestry in the Brazilian Amazon.

If, once you've opened the article, you scroll down to Section 5.2, you'll find a discussion of extractive reserves in Rondonia, one of the Brazilian states we'll be visiting. (Indeed, the concept of extractive reserves is one you should all be familiar with before we arrive.) You might also want to browse elsewhere in this long article.

soybeans and the Brazilian Amazon

Old images of Brazil as a country covered with jungle from top to bottom are in danger of being replaced by images of Brazil as one enormous field of beans.

This article, from the US Department of Agriculture, gives you some background into the changing place of soybean cultivation in the Brazilian Amazon. The report is from January 2004, but may well give you some valuable context for our travels. After all, one of the reasons for the road we're studying is to enable Brazil to export its beans to China more easily than by shipping them to the distant Atlantic coast.

Bolivia photos from the last Luther J-Term (2007)

Alan Perry, our main man in Bolivia, has posted some photos from the last Luther group to visit the area, in 2007. This time, we may or may not visit the same community (Sani), but the photos give you a good general idea of the region.

(There are photos of some other groups as well; just click on Sani/Luther College.)