Selective logging or partial forest removal is the practice of cutting down a few species of trees while leaving the rest intact and unharmed.
[1] Selective logging in the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest was recently shown in analyses of Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus data at high spatial resolution to be occurring at rates of about 12,000–20,000 km2 per year,[2] thus indicating the central role of selective logging in tropical forest disturbance.
Although selective logging has far less impact on forest processes than deforestation, selectively logged sites have higher rates of forest fires,[3][4] tree fall,[5] changes in microclimate,[6] soil compaction and erosion,[7] among other ecological impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning.
Logging activities has now increased from initially low volume harvests of floodplains to much higher rates that remove around 25 million cubic metres (880×10^6 cu ft) of wood from the forest each year.
The ecological, social, and economic impacts drive a better understanding of efficient forest management techniques and deforestation.
These mills gained access to other areas of the Amazon through new government policies and turned selective logging into the main contributor to economic growth.
This led to an abrupt advancement in the economy followed by a decline along with, high rates of deforestation, ecological damage, and a precedent of poor management practices that continue to purge the logging industry today.
Additionally, illegal logging results in impoverished forests, biodiversity loss, and increased probability of fire.
The effects of selective logging can be broken down into three major components: ground damage as a result of harvest operations, temporal patterns of canopy gap fraction within each ground damage category, and temporal changes in gap fraction resulting from felled trees.
Since many of the logging practices were unregulated, high damage extraction operations rendered the forest land susceptible to drought and fire.