Spatial Distribution of Saw Mills in Brazilian Amazonia

Spatial Distribution of Saw Mills in Brazilian Amazonia

Amazonia contains the world's largest reserve of tropical timber. More than 2000 mills are harvesting this timber, and in the process they are altering large areas of forest, constructing roads into remote forest regions, and providing employment and revenue to rural Amazonian economies. An understanding of the spatial distribution of these saw mills, the volumes of wood that they are harvesting, and the area of forest that they are harvesting, is needed if we are to understand the impact of human activities upon carbon, water and nutrient cycles of Amazonian ecosystems.

This dataset consists of a digital map of the spatial distribution of 1190 saw mills surveyed by Instituto Amazônico do Homem e do Meio Ambiente (Amazon Institute of Man and the Environment, IMAZON). These data will be made available through this web site by June 30, 1998.

The objective of this study was to determine the geographical distribution of saw mills in Brazilian Amazonia, the production of roundwood, sawnwood, veneer and plywood by these mills, and the intensities at which these mills harvest wood from forests. Brazilian Amazonia is defined to include the states of Amazônas, Amapá, Acre, Pará, Rondônia, Roraima, Mato Grosso, Tocantins, and Maranhão.

Spatial Distribution of Saw Mills in Brazilian Amazonia

Amazonia's wood industry is concentrated in wood processing centers, with only a small percentage of wood production (estimated here as <5% of the total) taking place in isolated mills. This study was designed to characterize these wood processing centers by conducting interviews in one third to one half of the sawmills in each center. As of April, 1998, 1190 sawmills had been interviewed in 76 wood processing centers.

The characterization of each wood processing center was conducted through a survey, lasting approximately one day, during which mill owners, and leaders of the wood industry were interviewed, and several mills were visited. This initial survey provided an overview of the major type of wood production of each center (sawnwood, veneer, plywood), and the average sizes of these mills.

After this survey, half of the mills of the center were selected for interviews. Four researchers then applied questionnaires to managers or owners of these selected mills to obtain information on production volume, and harvest intensities. In a total of 10 interviews, the mill logging crews were accompanied into the forest to verify the harvest intensity reported by the interviewee.
The results of 1190 mill surveys have been tabulated in Microsoft Excel 6.0, and a map displaying the location of the 76 wood processing centers was prepared in ArcInfo/3.4 Plus.

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Adalberto Veríssimo, Eirivelthon Lima, Peter Schlesinger, M.A., Daniel Nepstad, Ph.D., Paul Lefebvre, M.S

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Two softwares are required to read the files in this dataset:

The GNU-gzip program (gzip.exe) and shareware tar program (tar.exe) are available via Anonymous FTP from the following site: wuarchive.wustl.edu, in the directory, /systems/msdos/gnuish, files: gzip124x.zip and gnutar.zip

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Peter Schlesinger / Dan Nepstad / Paul Lefebvre
Woods Hole Research Center
PO Box 296, 149 Woods Hole Rd.
Woods Hole, MA 02543

October 26, 2004

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http://whrc.org/LBA_data/Braz_sawmill.htm