The building of dams can create floods in the area while mining can cause soil erosion and water contamination due to toxic chemicals such as mercury.
In addition the building of oil and gas pipelines can pose a threat to the area with the possibility of a leak and the construction of the pipelines themselves can cause a disturbance in the environment.
Oil exploration in the Amazon started as early as the 1920s with a tremendous boom in the 1970s. Now there are around 180 oil and gas blocks covering 688,000km^2 in the western Amazon and at least thirty five multinational oil and gas companies operate these blocks (Finer, et.all). In Figure A below one can observe the gas and oil pipelines as well as the gas and oil blocks in the western Amazon while in Figure B one is able to observe the overlap of different species within this area.
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| Figure A (Finer, et.all) |
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| Figure B (Finer, et. all) |
As you can see an enormous amount of species is affected by these gas and oil blocks.
Because of the building of pipelines one of the most detrimental occurrences in the area also happens... roads. Roads cause detrimental damage in the area causing habitat fragmentation disrupting animal and plant habitats. In addition the pollution that is coming from vehicles can cause problems in the area.
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ReplyDeleteHi Justina. I really like the idea of your blog, and it is similar to what I discussed in mine. However, as Jamie pointed out, there are some formatting, grammatical issues, as well as a lack of figures and pictures.
ReplyDeleteOverall your topic and choice of subtopics are very interesting and had a lot of solid information.
- Cory Kowalik