Researchers have confirmed a long-suspected link between logging and the devastation of forest fires in tropical rain forests. Forest fires that ripped through East Kalimantan, Indonesia, in 1998 burned more than 12 million acres (5 million hectares). The Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), based in Bogor, Indonesia, estimated that the economic loss to Indonesia exceeded U.S. $9 billion and that carbon emissions were high enough to make the country one of the largest polluters in the world.
