HUMAN-CAUSED FIRES ARE DESTROYING THE AMAZON

[Judi Lynn]

A new study using a combination of data sources finds that fire is causing more degradation of forests than logging, the other most significant driver of loss in the Amazon.
DAVID KLINGES1 HOUR AGO

The shrieking rip of a chainsaw and the muffled roar of fire: both of these sounds are associated with extensive destruction of Amazon rainforest. But is logging or human-caused fire a larger issue for the fate of the Amazon? And when such activities culminate in a partially degraded forest—rather than complete deforestation—is there much cause for alarm?

A recent study published in Environmental Research Letters explored these questions. Using a combination of ground-based, satellite, and LiDAR data, scientists from the University of Maryland and NASA recorded the loss of carbon due to forest degradation in areas exposed to logging, fire damage, or both, in 7,722 square miles of the southeast Amazon's "arc of deforestation," a crescent-shaped strip of intensive forest conversion along the southern and eastern edges of the forest.

The researchers found that degraded forest stands contained an average of 45.1 percent of the amount of carbon stored in intact forest stands. They compared the impacts of fire and logging, the two most prominent drivers of loss of forest carbon stocks. Fires not only resulted in higher loss of stored carbon than logging, but fire-damaged forests also recovered more slowly than logged forests. Forests subjected to fire remained more impacted after 15 years than forests subjected to logging after the same duration, and neither type of forest recovered to pre-disturbance carbon density.

"We combined [forest inventory, satellite, and LiDAR data] within a modeling framework to predict how losses and recovery rates of carbon stocks/forest structure are driven by differences in the type, intensity, and frequency of human degradation," said the study's lead author Danielle Rappaport, a doctoral candidate at the University of Maryland. "By providing the first comprehensive set of emissions factors for Amazon forest degradation, this work aims to help support the formal integration of degradation within carbon accounting systems, which have generally excluded degradation all together."

More:
https://psmag.com/environment/manmade-fires-are-killing-the-amazon

[dixiegrrrrl]

1. Trees, forests, jungle, etc are the planet's lungs.

And man is the cancer.

[Duppers]

2. Indeed!

How can so many people remain so ignorant?

We're killing ourselves.