Throughout human history, the world's great forest formations have yielded to logging, cattle ranching, and agricultural expansion after transportation corridors made them accessible to frontier settlers. The Brazilian Amazon could prove to be an exception to this...

Leaf-cutter ants (Atta spp.) remove leaf litter and woody debris—potential fuels—in and around their nests and foraging trails. We conducted single and three annual experimental fires to determine the effects of this leaf-cutter ant activity on the behavior of...

This paper provides an overview of agricultural and forestry development in the Amazon basin, and presents and discusses the main land use systems in evidence today in that region. These are logging, shifting-cultivation and ranching. The issue of sustainability is...