Bugs Help Measure Impact of New Transoceanic Highway on Amazon

“Bugs Help Measure Impact of New Transoceanic Highway on Amazon” from National Geographic is a very relevant and important article to the environmental issues we are facing today. This article is explaining the citizen led studies of the Transoceanic Highway which is a major road that stretches from the Atlantic Ocean in Brazil to the Pacific Ocean in Peru, opened to the public for the first time earlier this year. Although this highway brings high economic benefits, many environmental concerns about the impact it will have on the Amazon’s plants and animals is unavoidably evident. The leaf pack is an experiment designed by the Stroud Water Research Center in Pennsylvania that is meant to study the water quality of the Amazon near the highway. The leaf pack consists of a mesh net stuffed with local tree leaves and secured to the bed of a stream. Despite such a simple design and idea, “the leaf packs can reveal a surprising amount of information about not only the health of a stream, but also the land surround it” Mustalish once said. An example of the information gathered from the leaf pack is if a stream contains a high population of flies known as midges, it is a sure sign that the ecosystem is polluted due to the fact that midges can tolerate low oxygen levels and high levels of silt in the water. Overall, the leaf pack project will focus on three key groups.  These groups of insects are mayflies, stoneflies and caddis flies.  These insects are specifically known from other studies to be excellent gauges of watershed health. By the presence and disappearance of those few groups of insects, these scientists will be able to determine the quality of the water and the overall effect that the highway had the richness of the ecosystem. The monitoring of these leaf packs has just begun and will continue until November but already significant data has been recorded that supports the idea that the highway dramatically hurts and affects the surrounding ecosystems in the Amazon. It will be very interesting what information these scientists gather in the coming months.

            I feel this article is really important nowadays due to the over construction and development of land all throughout the world. We are overworking the earth and causing too many problems that we will not be able to fix in order to sustain or planet. I choose this article because it is very relevant to me and my AP Environmental Science course I took this year, as this exactly was a very important topic and I learned a lot about the construction of roads and the serious effects it has on an ecosystem. 

            Overall, I was very interested by this article and I had a great time reading it. The only thing I think maybe could be improved upon is the condensing of the information projected in the article. While a great article with lots of information, I sometimes felt that stuff was being repeated and maybe could have been cut out in order to simplify and organize the article for easier reading. Despite this, it was still a great article with very relevant and strong message to us as a whole, today.

Than, Ker. "Bugs Help Measure Impact of New Transoceanic Highway on Amazon."National Geographic. National Geographic Society, 18 May 2012. Web. 23 May 2012. <http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/05/120518-leaf-packs-transoceanic-highway-amazon-water-quality/>.