DEFORESTACIóN Y DINáMICA DEL BOSQUE SECUNDARIO EN LA AMAZONIA COLOMBIANA 1986-2000

the colombian amazon covers 477,375 km2 that accounts for 41.7% of the country's continental platform. the colombian amazonian forest is, by its area, the most important in the country, accounting for over one half of colombia's forest cover. however, little is known about its dynamics. there are considerable differences between secondary forest and deforestation estimates for this region. this fact has profound repercussions on the net co2 national balance. a supervised classification was performed for 29 pairs of landsat tm and etm+ satellite images between 1986 and 2000 for five land cover types: natural pastures, agro-ecosytems, sand, water and rock outcrops. results suggest that in spite of regions with a succession process of 620 km2 , about 12.200 km2 were deforested, approximately 852 km2 annually and an annual growth of secondary forest of 43.3 km2 for an annual deforestation rate or "r" of 0.23%. in other words, 2.8% of the colombian amazonian forest was lost between 1986 and 2000. the greatest deforestation rates were observed to the west of the territories of putumayo and caqueta and to the southwest of meta. however, succession took place in central caquetá, northwestern amazonas, vaupes and eastern guainia. results obtained here seriously question deforestation measured in squared km2 per annum, previously reported, being one order of magnitude lower.