Amazon rainforest reaches the area and so the lower the yield per hectare becomes. So despite the popular perception, there has been no economical advantage for Brazil from logging rainforest zones and converting these to pastoral fields. The needs of soy farmers have been used to justify many of the controversial transportation projects that are currently developing in the Amazon. The first two highways successfully opened up the rainforest and led to increased settlement and deforestation. The mean annual deforestation rate from 2000 to 2005 ( per year) was 18% higher than in the previous five years ( per year). Although deforestation
Rainforest plays a significant role in causing rainforests to release carbon dioxide, as do other factors, whether human-induced or natural, which result in tree death, such as burning and drought. Some climate models operating with interactive vegetation predict a large loss of Amazonian rainforest around 2050 due to drought, forest dieback and the subsequent release of more carbon dioxide. Five million years from now, the Amazon rainforest may long since have dried and transformed itself into savannah, killing itself in the progress (changes such as this may happen even if all human deforestation activity ceases overnight). Tropical rainforests provide timber as