YDT 2018-1 Soru=42

Which of the following best describes the relationship between road construction and deforestation?

It was a road that kicked off the pattern of destruction in
the Amazon forest. During the 1970s, Brazil began
building the Trans-Amazonian Highway from near the
country’s easternmost point to its western border, where
the state of Amazonas meets Peru. The route opened
up the heart of the Amazon to settlement, causing
deforestation rates to increase. During the 1990s and
early 2000s, more than 25,000 square kilometres of
rainforest per year were cleared out. Throughout these
years, roads have provided the means to penetrate the
forest and eliminate large chunks of it. In an
unpublished study of the Brazilian Amazon, researcher
Christopher Barber found that 95% of deforestation in
the region occurs within 7 kilometres of a road. Once
construction begins, road crews are quickly followed by
land speculators, loggers, farmers, ranchers, gold
miners and others who carve away the forest along the
route. This creates great treeless expanses in the
landscape, but research is now showing that the
building of roads also triggers environmental changes in
the remaining forest that can dry out trees, set the stage
for wildfires, and weaken the ecosystem