Amazon rainforest major threat to the Amazon rainforest. The highway still has not been completed, limiting the environmental damage. Between 1991 and 2000, the total area of forest lost in the Amazon rose from , with most of the lost forest becoming pasture for cattle. Seventy percent of formerly forested land in the Amazon, and 91% of land deforested since 1970, is used for livestock pasture. Currently, Brazil is the second-largest global producer of soybeans after the United States. New research however, conducted by Leydimere Oliveira et al., has shown that the more rainforest is logged in the Amazon, the less precipitation
Amazon rainforest transported by wind from the Sahara to the Amazon: an average 182 million tons of dust are windblown out of the Sahara each year, at 15 degrees west longitude, across over the Atlantic Ocean (some dust falls into the Atlantic), then at 35 degrees West longitude at the eastern coast of South America, 27.7 million tons (15%) of dust fall over the Amazon basin, 132 million tons of dust remain in the air, 43 million tons of dust are windblown and falls on the Caribbean Sea, past 75 degrees west longitude. CALIPSO uses a laser range finder to scan the