TROPICAL ECOLOGY ASSIGNMENT
Due: Tuesday 4th May 2010
(please deliver a hard copy to the box outside my office)
Object:
I want you to examine the latest datasets on tropical deforestation and protection,
digest them and provide me with a summary report of trends.
Data Source:
The raw information is available online from the United Nations Environment
Program at
http://www.unep-wcmc.org/forest/homepage.htm
Go to “Datasets and maps”, and then “Forest protection analysis”. (You will also need to
follow other links for explanations of categories etc).
Look at and compare the statistics for the major regions of South America, Africa,
Central America, and insular southeast Asia. What are the most threatened biomes? Is
the pattern the same in each of these geographical regions?
Go to the “Country level analyses” and compare (at least) the situations in Brazil,
Ecuador and Venezuela. How do they differ?
Based on all of the above, what would be your conservation priorities regionally, and
within South America specifically?
This assignment is intended to be very open-ended. There is a lot of information at this
web site, and of course elsewhere on the web, and you are cordially invited to draw
deeply from it.