In Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who has made both mask and vaccine mandates illegal, has asked hospitals in the state to stop non-emergency procedures in an effort to free up space for COVID-19 patients. Abbott tweeted that he has also brought in medical staffing from outside of Texas to help hospitals, and directed the Texas Division of Emergency Management to open additional COVID-19 antibody infusion centers in communities across the state. Abbott said he hopes these infusion centers will prevent moderately ill patients from becoming sick enough for hospitalization. Currently 9,500 Texans are hospitalized with the virus.
Source: Hospitals fill in Texas, Mississippi due to COVID-19 | CIDRAP
The map above, based on an analysis of Landsat data by The Sustainability Consortium and WRI, highlights several key drivers of forest loss. Shifting agriculture (yellow) typically involves the clearing of small plots within forests in Africa, Central America, and parts of South America. The clearing is done by subsistence farmers, often families, who raise a mixture of vegetables, fruits, grains, and small livestock herds for a few years and then let fields go fallow and move on as soil loses its fertility. The practice is especially common in Africa, and has become more so since 2000 due to increasing human populations. In South America and Southeast Asia, commodity crops (tan on the map) have become the dominant driver of forest loss. Common commodity crops include beef, soybeans, palm oil, corn, and cotton. They are typically grown on an industrial scale and traded internationally. Unlike the temporary forest clearings associated with small-scale agriculture, commodity-scale production often involves clear-cutting and results in significant impacts on forests (like the Indonesian palm oil plantation below).
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