Data on fires in the Amazon

- According to a new study, 1.1 million cattle were bought directly from protected areas and another 2.2 million spent at least a portion of their lives grazing in protected areas and Indigenous territories.- Researchers compiled public records on cattle transit, property boundaries and protected area boundaries between 2013 and 2018. The study period ended in 2018 because, “at the start of 2019, this critical information became less available,” the lead author said.- Under Brazil’s current President Jair Bolsonaro, who was elected at the start of 2019, the country has seen policies weakening various environmental protections and monitoring agencies, and deforestation has reached its highest levels in 15 years.- Around 70% of deforestation in the Amazon has been linked to cattle ranching. Meat producers have made commitments to stop sourcing from illegally deforested lands, but a lack of information about where cattle are grazing has allowed many companies to escape accountability.

- Fires in the Brazilian Amazon surged in August to the highest for the month since 2010, surpassing the blazes in August 2019 that drew global attention.- On Aug. 22 alone, more than 3,300 fire alerts were reported in 24 hours, the worst single-day tally in the Amazon in 15 years.- Researchers say it’s still too early to tell how severe this fire season will be, but what happened in August is an early warning.

- Multiple recent reports show that deforestation has greatly increased in Venezuela’s Amazonian states of Bolívar and Amazonas, largely due to illegal mining, expanded agriculture and fires.- Venezuelan protected areas have been especially hard hit, with illegal incursions and major deforestation occurring inside Caura, Canaima and Yapacana national parks.- Soaring deforestation rates are blamed partly on Colombian guerrillas operating illegally within Venezuela’s borders, an invasion that one report alleges has been supported by the government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.- Forest loss has been well confirmed via satellite, while ground truthing has been obtained via firsthand accounts.

- Fires are now causing an additional 3 million hectares (7.4 million acres) of tree cover loss per year than they did in 2001, according to a newly released Global Forest Watch analysis that examined fires that burn all or most of a forest’s living overstory trees.- The majority of all fire-caused tree cover loss in the past 20 years (nearly 70%) occurred in boreal regions. Although fires are naturally occurring there, they are now increasing at an annual rate of 3% and burning with greater frequency and severity and over larger areas than historically recorded.- Fires are not naturally occurring in tropical rainforests, but in recent years, as deforestation and climate change have degraded and dried out intact forests, fires have been escaping into standing tropical rainforests. GFW findings suggest fires in the tropics have increased by roughly 5% per year since 2001.- Researchers say there is no “silver bullet” solution for forest fires, but experts call for more spending on planning and preparation.

- The Brazilian Amazon saw the highest number of fires for the month of June in 15 years, with 2,562 major fires detected, an increase of 11.14% over 2021.- The first half of the year had 7,533 major fires, the most since 2019, according to data from the national space research institute.- On June 23, the Brazilian government issued a decree banning the use of fires to manage forests throughout the country for the next 120 days.- Experts say they’re skeptical about this ban, noting that similar measures failed to stop the burning in previous years, and say the weather is the only thing that can help curb the increase in fires as the dry season unfolds.

- A new council set by the Brazilian government to vet deforestation and forest fire data from the country’s space agency has been widely slammed as a political ploy to aid President Jair Bolsonaro’s reelection bid.- The National Institute of Space Research (INPE) has provided and analyzed deforestation and forest fire data in the Amazon since 1988 and is globally renowned for its monitoring expertise, but was left out of the new council.- The Bolsonaro government has questioned the credibility of INPE’s data since taking office in 2019, drawing outrage from scientists and researchers for claiming that data showing a spike in deforestation under Bolsonaro was false.- Experts have raise concerns that the new council could prevent the release of annual deforestation data, scheduled at the same time as this year’s elections, that are expected to show an alarming increase in both forest loss and fires.

- Researchers recorded thousands of hours of sounds in areas that had been logged, burned once and burned multiple times along the “arc of deforestation” in the Brazilian Amazon.- In the forests with repeated fires, animal communication networks were quieter, with less diversity of sound than in logged forests or forests burned only once. This type of acoustic monitoring can be used as a cost-effective way to check the pulse of the forest.- The authors were surprised to find that insects, not birds, were the most obvious signal of forest degradation. Additionally, they found that amount of biomass in a forest doesn’t correlate with the level of biodiversity.- There’s a major difference in the biodiversity of a forest after one burn versus multiple burns, one author said, so protecting forests from repeated fires is still worthwhile.

- Satellites have detected forest clearing within the Triunfo do Xingu Environmental Protection Area (APA) this year, a legally protected area of Brazil’s Amazon rainforest.- Despite its status, 35% of the primary (or old-growth) forest within the APA was lost between 2006 and 2021, making it one of the most deforested slices of the Brazilian Amazon.- The APA was created in 2006 to serve as a buffer for vulnerable surrounding areas, such as the Apyterewa Indigenous Territory and the massive Terra do Meio Ecological Station, but deforestation has spilled over into both.- Deforestation in the region is largely driven by cattle ranching, but land grabbing and mining have also increased in recent years, with invaders emboldened by the rhetoric and policies of the current government.

- The world lost a Cuba-sized area of tropical forest in 2021, putting it far off track from meeting the no-deforestation goal by 2030 that governments and companies committed to at last year’s COP26 climate summit.- Deforestation rates remained persistently high in Brazil and the Democratic Republic of Congo, home to the world’s two biggest expanses of tropical forest, negating the decline in deforestation seen in places like Indonesia and Gabon.- The diverging trends in the different countries show that “it’s the domestic politics of forests that often really make a key difference,” says leading forest governance expert Frances Seymour.- The boreal forests of Eurasia and North America also experienced a spike in deforestation last year, driven mainly by massive fires in Russia, which could set off a feedback loop of more heating and more burning.

- The Amazon Rainforest is losing its ability to bounce back from repeated disturbances, according to a new study.- Researchers found that three-quarters of the Amazon has lost some resilience, or ability to regain biomass after disturbance. This loss of resilience is especially high in regions close to human activity and with less rainfall.- As the forest is slashed, burned and degraded, it’s left with less vegetation, which means less evapotranspiration, leading to less rain. And less rain leads to further droughts, fires, tree death and forest degradation — a feedback loop of destruction and loss of resilience.- The lead author describes the findings as “depressing” but also says that “having an early warning of this gives us a chance to do something about it … Rather than focusing on the trajectory the Amazon is on, we can instead try and change it.”