EAST LANSING, Mich. — Five years ago, Bob Walker stopped counting the miles he’s traveled in the Brazilian Amazon when he reached 10,000. The Michigan State University geography professor estimates he’s spent a good two years of his life crisscrossing the world’s largest rainforest to study the effects of agriculture, logging and development.
But never has Walker traveled the infamous Transamazon Highway as it extends deep into the heart of the Amazon.
Until now, that is.
This summer Walker and two colleagues will conduct the first research expedition of the western-most leg of the Transamazon – a 700-mile dirt road that begins at the point where civilization essentially ends.
It’s unexplored territory. The great unknown. As the Brazilian government cracks down on logging operations in the east to protect the environment, loggers are moving west along this wild stretch of the Transamazon.
While Brazil has become a major global exporter of wood, beef, soybeans and the ethanol used in biofuels, critics say this comes at the expense of the environment. Walker said massive development along the western Transamazon could eventually push the Amazon to its tipping point – when the rainforest ceases to exist.
“This may be the battleground of that tipping point, and it’s critically important to study it in the early stages of change,” he said.
But the trip comes with the threat of danger. Loggers are known to kill one another over territory. There are bandits. Malaria-carrying mosquitoes. Vampire bats with rabies. Massive snakes. Tainted water. Rickety bridges that can collapse under the weight of the researchers’ vehicle.
Even after all his time in the Amazon, Walker admits he doesn’t know what the team will encounter.
“It’s a new frontier,” he said, “with indigenous peoples, gold miners and very few settlements. Our feeling is one of excitement, tinged with a sense of the unknown.”
The trip also comes during the 40-year anniversary of the Transamazon, which was started in 1970 and terminated two years later. Officially known as BR-230, the highway was envisioned as a fully paved thoroughfare integrating the isolated Amazon with the rest of Brazil and other South American countries.
But today, while eastern parts of the highway are paved, the western portion remains a dirt roadbed that can be impassable during the December-May rainy season.
The researchers will travel in a standard four-wheel-drive truck from the city of Itaituba west to the small town of Labrea, where the Transamazon ends. The trip should take about two weeks. Traveling with Walker will be three Brazilians: Eugenio Arima, a former doctoral student of Walker’s who is now an assistant professor at Hobart and William Smith Colleges; Ritaumaria Pereira, an MSU doctoral candidate in geography; and a local driver.
The researchers will sleep on mosquito net-covered hammocks strung up in the mud huts of local settlers, in the truck, or wherever they can find shelter. They’ll pack as much bottled water as possible and eat local fare, including rice and beans, fish and plenty of papaya and other fruit.
The trip is part of Walker’s ongoing research, funded by the National Science Foundation, into the impact of tree loss, or deforestation, on the Amazon. As part of his research, Walker will document logging activity as it impacts the forest and interview workers in the logging industry and longtime residents about the effects of development.
For Walker, who made his first trip to the Amazon 20 years ago, the research offers him a chance to help inform environmental policy in one of the world’s most ecologically rich regions.
“This is an opportunity to study a place that just 40 years ago was absolutely pristine, and to try to understand how it could be sustained in the face of changes that are coming down the road,” Walker said. “I would like to be part of that – helping in that process of protecting a legacy for future generations.”
For more information on MSU geographers' research in the Amazon, visit http://geo.msu.edu/amazonia/.
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