Yarotska A., Bezugly V., Tsvetaeva O.

Oles Honchar Dnipropetrovsk National University

PROBLEMS OF THE DAMP EQUATOR WOODS

The damp equatorial woods of South America, the Central Africa and South-East Asia belong to the most important biosystem of the Earth. The equatorial woods occupy the greatest places in a river basin of Amazon (the wood of Amazonia), in Nicaragua, in the southern part of the peninsula Yucatan (Guatemala, Belize), in the biggest part of Central America (here they are called "selva"), in the equatorial Africa (from Cameroon to the Democratic republic of Congo), many areas of South-East Asia (from Myanmar to Indonesia and Papua New Guinea), in the Australian State of Queensland. The damp equatorial woods of Africa occupy a hollow of Congo and the coast of the Gulf of Guinea to the North from the equator. These woods differ a huge specific variety of plants up to 50 m high and a multiple layers. At such multiple layers on the soil not enough light gets, but land plants develop as it is good. The equatorial wood – the homeland of many valuable plants, for example, an olive palm – tree, from which receive palm-oil. Wood of many trees goes on production of furniture and in a large number is exported. Many plants give not only valuable wood, but also fruits for use in technical production and medicine. These woods serve as "planet lungs", emitting oxygen and absorbing carbon dioxide. However they are cut down with menacing speed as economically to prepare wood and to create new pastures. But in Amazonia, in a river basin of Congo, on the Zond archipelago impassable virgin thickets still remained, and in Brazil and Costa Rica programs which will allow to combine profitable land use with preservation of unique environment are developed. The magnificent vegetation of the damp equatorial woods is connected not with fertility of the soil (it is very poor here), and intensive circulation of the nutrients almost entirely consisting in a biomass. If cut down trees, a little that will grow on their place, and frequent heavy rain will quickly wash away the bared soil. After destruction of the Amazonian wood the earth was used by farmers only some years while its fertility didn't fall too low. Now the Amazonian wood remains only for 85% of its potential area. Preservation of this most valuable natural heritage became a problem of the international scale.

The huge site of the wood in the north of Brazil was reduced during petroprospecting works. Steady rains cause a soil erosion which expands emptiness more and more and cuts deep ravines in the bared slopes. It constantly grows.

Very often data of the woods lead the sharp outbreaks of the infectious diseases which carriers are insects. So, malarial mosquitoes breed in the still water which quantity sharply increases in the course of wood data.

 In general 18 million hectares of the wood disappear, and not only for the sake of wood annually are around the world are reduced. Especially intensively the woods are reduced in Brazil and Indonesia (pic. 1). The community has to help the equatorial countries to develop more rational systems of land use and to find alternative sources of the income to slow down destruction of natural riches.

Fig. 1. Dynamics of deforestation on Kaoimantan's island in the Zond archipelago

The technique of preservation of the fertility, reproducing a cycle of natural regeneration is so far developed. Thus copy system "from a farm to the wood", consistently using useful plants in each stage of a cycle:

- jumping of grassy cultures (Ananas comosus, Saccharum officinarum);

- for the second year to farmers recommend to put bananas and a papaya which keep efficiency within 5–10 years;

- at the same time introducing trees which are a part of the radical wood (a peach palm tree, the Brazilian nut).

Problems of the damp equatorial woods have to be studied and be exposed to the multilateral analysis from ecological, to be exact, eco-economic point of view.