Amazon deforestation and number of fires show summer of 2019 not a ‘normal’ year

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on November 18, 2019 / comment : 0 Biodiversity, Brazil, Ecosystems, Natural Heritage, Rainforests

The fires that raged across the Brazilian Amazon this summer were not 'normal' and large increases in deforestation could explain why, scientists show.

Recently deforested land in the Amazon [Credit: Marizilda Cruppe/ Rede Amazonia Sustentavel]

The perceived scale of the Amazon blazes received global attention this summer. However, international concerns raised at the time were countered by the Brazilian Government, which claimed the fire situation in August was 'normal' and 'below the historical average'.

An international team of scientists writing in the journal Global Change Biology say the number of active fires in August was actually three times higher than in 2018 and the highest number since 2010.

Although fires in the Amazon can occur in a number of ways, the scientists show that there is strong evidence to link this year's increases to deforestation.

They have used evidence collected from the Brazilian Government's DETER-b deforestation detection system -- which calculates deforestation by interpreting images taken by NASA satellites.

This shows that deforestation in July this year was almost four times the average from the same period in the previous three years. This is important as deforestation is almost always followed by fire -- the cut vegetation is left to dry before being burned.

Professor Jos Barlow, lead author of the paper said: "The marked upturn in both active fire counts and deforestation in 2019 therefore refutes suggestions by the Brazilian Government that August 2019 was a normal fire month in the Amazon."

Evolutionary diversity is associated with Amazon forest productivity

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on November 11, 2019 / comment : 0 Biodiversity, Ecosystems, Evolution, Genetics, Rainforests, South America

An international team of researchers led by the University of Leeds have revealed for the first time that Amazon forests with the greatest evolutionary diversity are the most productive.

The Amazon canopy [Credit: Fernanda Coelho,  University of Leeds]

The team used long term-records from 90 plots as part of the Amazon Forest Inventory Network (RAINFOR) and ForestPlots.net to track the lives and productivity of individual trees across the Amazon region. By combining these records with DNA sequence data - which identified the evolutionary relationships among all the species - the team was able to investigate the links between how fast different forests grow and their diversity.

Their study demonstrated that the plots with the greatest evolutionary diversity were a third more productive compared to areas with the least evolutionary diversity.

The finding suggest that evolutionary diversity should be an important consideration when identifying priority areas for conservation.

Study lead author Fernanda Coelho from the School of Geography at Leeds said: "Understanding how biodiversity affects productivity in tropical forests is important because it allows us to understand how conservation strategies can best be designed to maximise protection of species and the services that these ecosystems provide.

"Our results indicate that we should include evolutionary history in conservation priorities - because ecosystem function may be higher in areas where species come from right across the tree of life'.

The paper is published in Nature Ecology & Evolution.

Source: University of Leeds [November 11, 2019]

Human activities drying out the Amazon: NASA study

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on November 06, 2019 / comment : 0 Amazonia, Biodiversity, Brazil, Ecosystems, Environment, Natural Heritage, Rainforests, South America

A new NASA study shows that over the last 20 years, the atmosphere above the Amazon rainforest has been drying out, increasing the demand for water and leaving ecosystems vulnerable to fires and drought. It also shows that this increase in dryness is primarily the result of human activities.

The Amazon rainforest [Credit: Marcio Isensee e Sa/Adobe Stock]

Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, analyzed decades of ground and satellite data over the Amazon rainforest to track both how much moisture was in the atmosphere and how much moisture was needed to maintain the rainforest system.

"We observed that in the last two decades, there has been a significant increase in dryness in the atmosphere as well as in the atmospheric demand for water above the rainforest," said JPL's Armineh Barkhordarian, lead author of the study. "In comparing this trend to data from models that estimate climate variability over thousands of years, we determined that the change in atmospheric aridity is well beyond what would be expected from natural climate variability."

So if it's not natural, what's causing it?

Barkhordarian said that elevated greenhouse gas levels are responsible for approximately half of the increased aridity. The rest is the result of ongoing human activity, most significantly, the burning of forests to clear land for agriculture and grazing. The combination of these activities is causing the Amazon's climate to warm.

When a forest burns, it releases particles called aerosols into the atmosphere—among them, black carbon, commonly referred to as soot. While bright-colored or translucent aerosols reflect radiation, darker aerosols absorb it. When the black carbon absorbs heat from the sun, it causes the atmosphere to warm; it can also interfere with cloud formation and, consequently, rainfall.

Why It Matters

The Amazon is the largest rainforest on Earth. When healthy, it absorbs billions of tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) a year through photosynthesis—the process plants use to convert CO2, energy and water into food. By removing CO2 from the atmosphere, the Amazon helps to keep temperatures down and regulate climate. But it's a delicate system that's highly sensitive to drying and warming trends.

The image shows the decline of moisture in the air over the Amazon rainforest, particularly across the south  and southeastern Amazon, during the dry season months - August through October - from 1987 to 2016. The measurements are shown in millibars [Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech, NASA Earth Observatory]

Trees and plants need water for photosynthesis and to cool themselves down when they get too warm. They pull in water from the soil through their roots and release water vapor through pores on their leaves into the atmosphere, where it cools the air and eventually rises to form clouds. The clouds produce rain that replenishes the water in the soil, allowing the cycle to continue. Rainforests generate as much as 80% of their own rain, especially during the dry season.

But when this cycle is disrupted by an increase in dry air, for instance, a new cycle is set into motion—one with significant implications, particularly in the southeastern Amazon, where trees can experience more than four to five months of dry season.

"It's a matter of supply and demand. With the increase in temperature and drying of the air above the trees, the trees need to transpire to cool themselves and to add more water vapor into the atmosphere. But the soil doesn't have extra water for the trees to pull in," said JPL's Sassan Saatchi, co-author of the study. "Our study shows that the demand is increasing, the supply is decreasing and if this continues, the forest may no longer be able to sustain itself."

Scientists observed that the most significant and systematic drying of the atmosphere is in the southeast region, where the bulk of deforestation and agricultural expansion is happening. But they also found episodic drying in the northwest Amazon, an area that typically has no dry season. Normally always wet, the northwest has suffered severe droughts over the past two decades, a further indication of the entire forest's vulnerability to increasing temperatures and dry air.

If this trend continues over the long term and the rainforest reaches the point where it can no longer function properly, many of the trees and the species that live within the rainforest ecosystem may not be able to survive. As the trees die, particularly the larger and older ones, they release CO2 into the atmosphere; and the fewer trees there are, the less CO2 the Amazon region would be able to absorb—meaning we'd essentially lose an important element of climate regulation.

The study was published in Scientific Reports.

Author: Esprit Smith | Source: NASA [November 06, 2019]

Carbon bomb: Study says climate impact from loss of intact tropical forests grossly underreported

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on October 30, 2019 / comment : 0 Biodiversity, Climate Change, Ecosystems, Endangered Species, Environment, Natural Heritage, Rainforests, Wildlife

A new study in the journal Science Advances says that carbon impacts from the loss of intact tropical forests has been grossly underreported.

Road for oil palm plantations in West Kalimantan, Indonesia [Credit: Rainforest Action Network]

The study calculates new figures relating to intact tropical forest lost between 2000-2013 that show a staggering increase of 626 percent in the long-term net carbon impacts through 2050. The revised total equals two years' worth of all global land-use change emissions.

The authors of the study, from WCS, University of Queensland, University of Oxford, Zoological Society of London, World Resources Institute, University of Maryland, and University of Northern British Columbia, found that direct clearance of intact tropical forests resulted in just 3.2 percent of gross carbon emissions from all deforestation across the pan-tropics. However, when they factored in full carbon accounting, which considers forgone carbon removals (carbon sequestration that would occur annually into the future if cleared or degraded forest had remained intact after year 2000), selective logging, edge effects and declines of carbon-dense tree species due to overhunting of seed-dispersing animals, they discovered that the figure skyrocketed by a factor of more than six times.

Said the study's lead author Sean Maxwell of WCS and the University of Queensland: "Our results revealed that continued destruction of intact tropical forests is a ticking time bomb for carbon emissions. There is an urgent need to safeguard these landscapes because they play an indispensable role in stabilizing the climate."

According to 2013 estimates, 549 million acres of intact tropical forests remain. Only 20 percent of tropical forests can be considered "intact," but those areas store some 40 percent of the above-ground carbon found in all tropical forests.

The authors say that intact forest retention rarely attracts funding from schemes designed to avoid land-use and land cover change emissions in developing nations.

Notably, the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) approach enables developing countries to receive financial incentives for enhancing carbon stocks, or avoiding the loss of carbon that would otherwise be emitted due to land-use and land cover change. Among other activities, REDD+ covers support for conservation of forests not under immediate threat, and was formally adopted by parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2008 at the 14th Conference of the Parties in Poland. Since then, however, financial support and implementation has predominantly focused on areas with high historical rates of deforestation (i.e. 'deforestation frontiers'). This is widely believed to deliver more immediate and more clearly demonstrable emission reductions than conserving intact forest areas. The latter tend to be treated as negligible sources of emissions as a result of the short timescales and conservative assumptions under which REDD+ operates - assumptions which the present study suggests are causing key opportunities to be missed.

Said WCS's Tom Evans, a co-author of the study: "The relative value of retaining intact tropical forest areas increases if one takes a longer-term view and considers the likely state of the world's forests by mid-century - a milestone date in the Paris Agreement. Agricultural expansion, logging, infrastructure and fires reduced the global extent of intact forests by 7.2 percent between 2000 and 2013 alone, yet the eventual carbon emissions locked in by these losses have not been comprehensively estimated."

The authors go on to say that a comparable analysis is needed for intact forests outside of the tropics such as the boreal forests of Canada and Russia, given that approximately half to two-thirds of carbon removals on earth's intact ecosystems occur outside the tropics. Without this global clean-up service, CO2 from human activities would accumulate in the atmosphere markedly faster than it does at present.

Said co-author James Watson of WCS and the University of Queensland: "Clearly, the climate mitigation potential of retaining intact forests is significant, but without proactive conservation action by national governments, supported by the global community, this potential will continue to dwindle.

At least 35 percent of the intact forests studied are home to, and protected by, Indigenous Peoples. Intact forests also provide exceptional levels of many other environmental services - for example they protect watersheds much better than degraded forests, return moisture to the air that falls in distant regions as rain, and help to keep vast numbers of species safe from extinction. When compared to forests that have been degraded by large-scale human activities, intact forests are more resistant to shocks such as fire and drought and usually less accessible to logging and agriculture conversion, making them one of our best conservation bets in the face of a rapidly changing climate.

Source: Wildlife Conservation Society [October 30, 2019]

Ancient Maya canals and fields show early and extensive impacts on tropical forests

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on October 07, 2019 / comment : 0 Americas, Archaeology, Belize, Central America, Ecosystems, Rainforests

New evidence in Belize shows the ancient Maya responded to population and environmental pressures by creating massive agricultural features in wetlands, potentially increasing atmospheric CO2 and methane through burn events and farming, according to geographical research at The University of Texas at Austin published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Pictured is the Birds of Paradise (BOP) ancient Maya wetland field system and parts of the nearby Maya sites of Gran Cacao (bottom-left) and Akab Muclil (top-left) in Northwestern Belize. The authors created this image  from a lidar-derived digital elevation model (DEM); a semi-transparent hillshaded DEM overlays a colourized DEM with a color stretch that emphasizes anthropogenic features  [Credit: T. Beach et al. 2019]

Prior research proposed that the Maya's advanced urban and rural infrastructure altered ecosystems within globally important tropical forests. But in the first study to combine airborne lidar (light detection and ranging) imagery with excavation and dating evidence in wetlands, researchers found the Birds of Paradise wetland field complex to be five times larger than previously discovered and found another, even larger, wetland field complex in Belize.

Altogether, the study shows the Maya had "earlier, more intensive and more wide-ranging anthropogenic impacts" on globally important tropical forests than previously known, adding to the evidence for an early and more extensive Anthropocene -- the period when human activity began to greatly affect Earth's environment.

"We now are beginning to understand the full human imprint of the Anthropocene in tropical forests," said Tim Beach, the study's lead author, who holds the C.B. Smith, Sr. Centennial Chair. "These large and complex wetland networks may have changed climate long before industrialization, and these may be the answer to the long-standing question of how a great rainforest civilization fed itself."

The team of faculty members and graduate students acquired 250 square kilometers of high precision laser imagery to map the ground beneath swamp-forest canopy, unveiling the expansive ancient wetland field and canal systems in Belize that the Maya depended on for farming and trade through periods of population shifts, rising sea levels and drought.

Accelerator mass spectrometry dates chart and conceptual model of wetland formation [Credit: T. Beach et al. 2019]

Evidence showed that the Maya faced environmental pressures, including rising sea levels in the Preclassic and Classic periods -- 3,000 to 1,000 years ago -- and droughts during the Late/Terminal Classic and Early Postclassic periods -- 1,200 to 900 years ago. The Maya responded to such pressures by converting forests to wetland field complexes and digging canals to manage water quality and quantity.

"These perennial wetlands were very attractive during the severe Maya droughts, but the Maya also had to be careful with water quality to maintain productivity and human health," said Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach, the study's co-author, who holds the Raymond Dickson Centennial Professorship at UT Austin.

Similarly, the researchers posit the Maya responded to large population shifts and changing demands for food production during the Late Preclassic to the Early Postclassic -- about 1,800 to 1,000 years ago -- by expanding their network of fields and canals in areas accessible by canoe to the broader Maya world. Within the fields, the researchers uncovered evidence of multiple ancient food species, such as maize, as well as animal shells and bones, indicating widespread protein harvesting.

The researchers hypothesized that expanding the wetland complexes added atmospheric CO2, through burning events; and methane, through the creation of wetland farming. Indeed, the largest premodern increase of methane, from 2,000 to 1,000 years ago, coincides with the rise of Maya wetland networks, as well as those in South America and China.

Field excavation face and photos of the fields and canals excavation faces (Upper) and the model of formation for these wetland complexes (Lower) [Credit: T. Beach et al. 2019]

"Even these small changes may have warmed the planet, which provides a sobering perspective for the order of magnitude greater changes over the last century that are accelerating into the future," Beach said.

The researchers hypothesize the Maya wetland footprint could be even larger and undiscernible due to modern plowing, aggradation and draining. Additional research on the region and its surrounding areas is already revealing the extent of wetland networks and how the Maya used them, painting a bigger picture of the Maya's possible global role in the Early Anthropocene.

"Understanding agricultural subsistence is vital for understanding past complex societies and how they affected the world we live in today," Beach said. "Our findings add to the evidence for early and extensive human impacts on the global tropics, and we hypothesize the increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane from burning, preparing and maintaining these field systems contributed to the Early Anthropocene."

Source: University of Texas at Austin [October 07, 2019]

More than 2 million animals perish in Bolivia wildfires

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on September 26, 2019 / comment : 0 Bolivia, Natural Heritage, Rainforests, South America, Wildlife

More than two million wild animals, including jaguars, pumas and llamas, have perished in weeks of wildfires that devastated huge swaths of Bolivian forest and grassland, environmental experts said Wednesday.

"The forest is totally charred and the damage is irreversible. It will never get back to normal," said Sandra Quiroga of Santa Cruz University [Credit: Pablo Cozzaglio/AFP]

The fires devastated the Chiquitania tropical savanna in the east of the country. "We have consulted the biologists of Chiquitania and we have exceeded the estimate of more than 2.3 million missing animals in many protected areas," Professor Sandra Quiroga of Santa Cruz University told AFP.

Latin American ocelots, and other wild cats like pumas and jaguars, as well as deer, llamas -- and smaller forest animals like anteaters, badgers, lizards, tapirs and rodents -- were victims of the fires, according to biologists investigating the scale of the damage.

Local media showed images of charred animal carcasses in the smouldering forests and birds fleeing to zones spared by the flames.

This snake could not escape the flames of a fire in the Otuquis National Park in eastern Bolivia [Credit: Aizar Raldes/AFP]

The fires, which have devastated more than four million hectares (10 million acres) since August, has completely destroyed the "primary forest" extending over 100 hectares in the Tucavaca reserve in the eastern Santa Cruz department.

"The forest is totally charred and the damage is irreversible. It will never get back to normal," said Quiroga.

The eastern department of Santa Cruz has been the hardest hit of Bolivia's nine departments since the fires began in May and intensified in late August

The remains of a fox killed in a forest fires in the Otuquis National Park in eastern Bolivia [Credit: Aizar Raldes/AFP]

Bolivia in August enlisted special firefighting planes, a Supertanker Boeing 747 and a Russian Ilyushin, as well as helicopters, 5,000 firefighters, soldiers and police but the fires have still not been extinguished.

Environmentalists blame laws enacted under leftist President Evo Morales, who has encouraged burning of forest and pasture land to expand agricultural production.

The government attributes the blazes to dry weather and flame-fanning winds.

Source: AFP [September 26, 2019]

Wilderness areas halve extinction risk

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on September 18, 2019 / comment : 0 Biodiversity, Bolivia, Endangered Species, Natural Heritage, Rainforests, Wildlife

The global conservation community has been urged to adopt a specific target to protect the world's remaining wilderness areas to prevent large scale loss of at-risk species.

Areas surrounding the Madidi National Park in the Bolivian Amazon has been identified as a vital 'at risk' wilderness area [Credit: University of Queensland]

A University of Queensland and CSIRO study has found that wilderness areas - where human impact is minimal or absent - halves the global risk of species extinction.

UQ Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science Director Professor James Watson said vital wilderness areas could not be restored so urgent action was needed to ensure these areas were marked for conservation and remained protected.

"Wilderness areas have decreased by more than three million square kilometres - half the size of Australia - since the 1990s," Professor Watson said. "Once these wilderness areas are gone, they are lost forever."

CSIRO researcher and UQ Adjunct Fellow Dr Moreno Di Marco said wilderness areas acted as a buffer against extinction risk, and the risk of species loss was more than twice as high for biological communities found outside wilderness areas.

The research showed some wilderness areas, such as areas surrounding Madidi National Park in the Bolivian Amazon, play an extraordinary role in their respective regional contexts, where their loss would drastically reduce the probability of persistence of biodiversity [Credit: Rob Wallace/WCS]

"This new research has identified the importance of wilderness areas in hosting highly unique biological communities and representing the only remaining natural habitats for species that have suffered losses elsewhere," he said.

Vital 'at risk' wilderness areas include parts of Arnhem Land, areas surrounding the Madidi National Park in the Bolivian Amazon, partially protected forests in Southern British Columbia, and surrounding savannah areas within the Zemongo Reserve in the Central African Republic.

The researchers used new global biodiversity modelling infrastructure developed at CSIRO integrated with the latest wilderness map developed by UQ, University of Northern British Colombia and the Wildlife Conservation Society.

The study provided fine-scale estimates of probability of species loss around the globe.

Professor Watson said that beyond saving biodiversity, Earth's remaining intact ecosystems are critical in also abating climate change, regulating essential biogeochemical and water cycles, and ensuring the retention of long-term bio-cultural connections of indigenous communities.

The study is published in Nature.

Source: University of Queensland [September 18, 2019]

Satellite study of Amazon rainforest land cover gives insight into 2019 fires

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on September 12, 2019 / comment : 0 Brazil, Ecosystems, Environment, Natural Heritage, Rainforests, South America

Throughout August and early September 2019, media around the world have reported on the extensive forest fires ravaging Brazil's Amazon rainforest. Much of the concern stems from the Amazon's significance to regulating the world's climate. According to the Associated Press, the Amazon absorbs 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide every year -- about 5% of global emissions. Thus, fires in the region eat away at this carbon-absorbing capacity while at the same time adding carbon to the air through burning.

A look at original forest in the Amazon [Credit: Gabriel de Oliveira]

A recent study in the peer-reviewed journal Ecohydrology headed by University of Kansas researcher Gabriel de Oliveira gives important context to the fires burning big swaths of the Amazon today, most of which were set intentionally by farmers and ranchers to convert forest into land suitable for grazing animals or growing crops. The researchers sought to discover how these changes to land cover affect the exchange of water and heat between the surface of the Amazon and the atmosphere overhead.

"This is the first study to examine the biosphere-atmosphere interactions in the Amazon with such high spatial resolution satellite imagery," said de Oliveira, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Geography & Atmospheric Science at KU. "We tried to understand the impacts of land-cover changes and deforestation in general. When you clear-cut the forests, and you convert it either to pasture or agriculture -- or cut the forest, but for some reason don't plant anything and then have a type of vegetation called 'secondary succession' -- our idea was to try to understand how that impacts energy, like the radiative fluxes and water fluxes, or evaporation in general."

In the paper, de Oliveira and his colleagues analyzed information from both satellites in space and weather stations on the ground in the Amazon. With data from the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) and Large-Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia (LBA), they examined surface energy and water changes over different land-cover types in one wet year and one drought year in eastern Rondonia state, Brazil. The team also found statistically significant differences in several important measures prior to and after one year of deforestation.

"Using NASA satellite images with high spatial resolution (15m) obtained by the ASTER sensor in Rondonia state, in the south-western Brazilian Amazon, we found that deforestation and consequent transition to pasture or agriculture to grow soybean tend to increase in two to four times the soil and air temperatures in the region," de Oliveira said. "We also observed an approximately three times higher evapotranspiration over forested areas in comparison with nonforested areas."

This map shows the study area and location of the flux tower used in this study [Credit: de Oliveira et al. 2019]

The researchers discovered significant variances between areas on opposite sides of the Ji-Parana River, one side of which had suffered more deforestation than the other side, located within the Jaru Biological Reserve protected area. They measured spatial variation of albedo (or the fraction of the incident sunlight that the surface reflects), net radiation (or the total energy, derived from sunlight, that's available at the surface), soil and sensible heat fluxes (or how much heat is transferred from the surface to the atmosphere), and evapotranspiration (the process by which water is transferred from the land to the atmosphere by evaporation from the soil and by transpiration from plants).

De Oliveira, who was raised in Brazil, said the rest of the world depends on the Amazon region to help moderate global climate.

"It's important because it's the largest rainforest in the world," he said. "Precipitation in the tropics, all the water fluxes that go on in the tropics, affect the whole world. The Amazon has a very important role in that. There's no other area in the world like the Amazon's unique ecosystem. It's pretty fascinating. I'm from South Brazil, a totally different environment than the Amazon. You could compare it with Kansas. But when I started studying for my master's degree, my adviser told me, 'You're going to work in the Amazon rainforest.' And I told her I'd never been there. But I spent two months in the rainforest doing research. And of course, you know, I fell in love. I'm very passionate about the Amazon and have been there so many times since then, so I have a lot of experience and stories of things that have happened there."

The KU researcher cautioned that although forest fires in the Amazon have received attention in the media this year, the fires happen to a greater or lesser degree every year.

"Fires in the Amazon happen every year during the dry season," de Oliveira said. "We have agricultural areas, areas that were deforested in the past -- but in order to clear the area for the next year, or to make the soil a little bit better for the next year, they set a fire. They claim they're only setting fire to burn agricultural lands. But sometimes the fire gets out of control, and it plays a part in more deforestation. Fires get out of control in agricultural land and reach the forest and burn the forest. But these fires happen in the Amazon every year, so it's pretty straightforward. The worst years were in 2005, 2010 and 2015 because of severe drought events. Everything was really dry, and the fires would get out of control. There are no natural fires in the Amazon. They're all set by human beings."

Author: Brendan M. Lynch | Source: University of Kansas [September 12, 2019]

Inferno in the rainforest

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on September 09, 2019 / comment : 0 Biodiversity, Brazil, Climate Change, Ecosystems, Environment, Natural Heritage, Rainforests

Fires in the Brazilian Amazon have reached the level of an international crisis. Since the start of the year, NASA satellites have detected more than 100,000 points of fire there. Though widespread slash-and-burn agriculture in the region means that some land is scorched every year, the scale of this year's fires is unusual, owing to a combination of drought and human activity, and it has attracted attention from around the world.

Sensors on NASA satellites Terra and Aqua captured a record of thousands of points of fire in Brazil in late August. The fires pose a threat to the Amazon rainforest and to people living in and around it [Credit: NASA Earth Observatory]

Most people are familiar with the Amazon as home to myriad plant and animal species. Twice the size of India, the rainforest is home to an estimated 10% of the world's biodiversity. The fires may trigger a host of other far-reaching effects, including impacts on human health and the climate.

To gain insight into some of these less understood possibilities, and to dig into the science of how fire can transform environments, Penn Today spoke with scientists Reto Giere and Alain Plante in Penn's Department of Earth and Environmental Science, who offered expertise on air pollution, carbon cycling, soil properties, agriculture, and ecology.

The Amazon isn't the world's only ecological hotspot on fire

The Brazilian Amazon fires have attracted global attention, including a pledge to help fight them from the G7 countries, but devastating fires are also affecting swaths of Africa and Southeast Asia, Giere notes.

"NASA has impressive satellite imagery that shows these fire belts across the African continent," he says. "You can see them from space every year."

Similar images reveal large areas of Indonesia and Malaysia on fire. As in the Amazon, that burning is driven by a desire to deforest land for agriculture practices, particularly for palm oil plantations that are widespread in Southeast Asia.

Fire is a natural feature of the African savannah, as it is in areas with a Mediterranean climate including parts of California and in boreal forest systems like Alaska and parts of northern Canada. Those ecosystems may bounce back relatively quickly from a burn. But Giere underscores that many of the fires there stem from or are exacerbated by human activity, amplifying the range and impact.

Toxic fumes from the fires pose a threat to human health

All uncontrolled fires produce smoke and can release fumes that are harmful to breathe. But those occurring in the Amazon may be of particular concern because of what is fueling the flames. According to Giere, out-of-control burns that engulf trees with a relatively high moisture content, as is typical of rainforest vegetation, can lead to what's known as incomplete combustion.

Smokes rises from the edges of a swath of rainforest in the state of Para in northern Brazil. Fires occur annually in the Amazon, but not since 2010 have satellites detected so many [Credit: NASA Earth Observatory]

"Examples of compounds produced when plants are burned include toxic volatile organic species, carbon monoxide, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs," says Giere. "In particular, the higher the moisture content of the wood, the more PAHs will end up in the atmosphere, and many of these are carcinogens. So higher moisture can lead to more toxic emissions."

A vast geographic area will feel the effects

"Very often the toxins attach themselves to solid particles like soot or mineral particles," Giere says. "Depending on the meteorological conditions, these particles can be blown thousands of miles." Photos from Sao Paolo, Brazil—hundreds of miles from the fires—have shown how smoke rendered the daytime sky like night.

In addition, by creating a smoky haze, fires reduce the amount of solar radiation that can penetrate to the ground. As the sun's rays bounce off the smoke, they increase heat in the atmosphere and hamper productivity of natural lands as well as agricultural lands.

"This has long-term effects and long-range effects," says Giere.

Forest destruction in the Amazon has consequences for climate change

The Amazon rainforest is a huge "sink" for carbon. Its towering trees hold on to a vast reserve that might otherwise accelerate climate change. Below ground, however, the Amazon is a much less fertile place than equivalent soils in temperate or boreal forests. Decomposition happens so fast in the tropics that few nutrients and little carbon wind up in the ground.

That's why farmers cut down and then burn patches of forest; the fires introduce the nutrients that had been held by the trees into the soil. But that influx of fertility is temporary.

"Because of this lack of natural fertility in the soil, a few years after burning the land the fertility is exhausted, so farmers move on and burn the next spot," says Plante. "That's one of the factors contributing to deforestation in the Amazon."

This also means that a fire in the rainforest can cause the ecosystem to release most of its carbon in one fell swoop.

"What you're doing is essentially burping out a lot of carbon dioxide," Plante says. "And you're now missing the forest that used to suck more carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere in its normal process of photosynthesis. Over the long term, if the forest recovers, the carbon dioxide will get recaptured by trees. But that can take generations, especially with fires at this scale."

Soil erosion may be one of the next big concerns

Once the fire has come through, the soils are vulnerable. "You're essentially taking a blanket off the ground," says Plante. When the trees are gone, the blanket is effectively removed, exposing the rainforest's soils to the elements. A strong rainstorm can cause massive erosion.

"Sediments can enter the streams and rivers, changing the turbidity of the water," says Giere. "This change affects the ecosystem of the rivers and all animals and plants that live there, probably with long-term effects."

Author: Katherine Unger Baillie | Source: University of Pennsylvania [September 09, 2019]

Forest loss in Brazil contributing to rising temperatures

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on September 02, 2019 / comment : 0 Brazil, Ecosystems, Environment, Natural Heritage, Rainforests

A global team of scientists including researchers from The University of Western Australia and the United States has found deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon-Cerrado region is causing temperatures to rise in areas as far as 50km away from deforestation sites.

Virgin jungle stands next to an area that was burnt recently near Porto Velho, Brazil, Friday, Aug. 23, 2019. Brazilian state experts have reported a record of nearly 77,000 wildfires across the country so far this year, up 85% over the same period in 2018. Brazil contains about 60% of the Amazon rainforest, whose degradation could have severe consequences for global climate and rainfall [Credit: Victor R. Caivano, AFP]

Associate Professor Sally Thompson, from UWA's School of Civil, Environmental and Mining Engineering and UWA Institute of Agriculture, said deforestation in Brazil mostly happened because farmers wanted to increase the land area they could farm.

"However, our research highlights the long-ranging impact on temperatures from deforestation and how farmers will benefit from forest conservation, which will help protect crops and stock from the worst of temperature extremes," Professor Thompson said.

The researchers analyzed satellite observations in the Amazon-Cerrado region to observe changes to forest cover and temperatures at more than 2000 sites between 2000 and 2015. They looked at how much the daily maximum temperature at a forested site would increase as the size of forest around it decreased. They also examined how far away from the area of deforestation temperatures would be affected.

Professor Thompson said although people thought of climate change as happening because of greenhouse gas emissions, changes in land cover, such as forest loss, also had dramatic effects.


"Tree cover stabilizes temperatures, because trees use water when they photosynthesize, and their evaporation cools the land," Professor Thompson said. "If you replace forests with crops, which use much less water, temperatures can increase by as much as two degrees Celsius."

Professor Thompson said the findings offered relevance to the importance of the conservation and restoration of forests and woodlands in Australia.

"Our own track record on deforestation is not great," she said. "Queensland has been clearing forests as rapidly as Brazil, mostly for cattle pasture. We know this is a problem for soil and water health, and a big problem for biodiversity. This research suggests it's likely to worsen the effects of climate warming."

Professor Thompson said the study, published in Environmental Research Letters, differed from other studies because it separated the effects of warming from forest loss at the site where forests were cleared, from warming that occurred due to neighboring forest losses.

"The fact that temperatures are sensitive to the loss of forest cover from up to 50km away is a surprise—it's much further than we anticipated," she said.

"Overall, we also found deforestation in the Amazon has caused temperatures to rise by about 0.5 degrees Celsius, with those temperature increases evenly split between the warming occurring where forest was lost and warming around that area."

Source: University of Western Australia [September 02, 2019]

How humans and chimpanzees travel towards a goal in rainforests

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on July 30, 2019 / comment : 0 Africa, Anthropology, Indigenous Cultures, Rainforests

The human ranging style is unique among hominoids. The Mbendjele BaYaka people move from camp to camp every few months, and thus have a large lifetime range of approximately 800 square meters. Human foragers collect food and take it back to their camp to process and share. Furthermore, the Mbendjele BaYaka have created a trail system and walk mostly on trails. In contrast, one of our closest living relatives, chimpanzees, live in a relatively smaller area (25 square meters) and spend most of their adult lives within the same home range.

Mbendjele woman inspecting a tree during a foraging trip with other women in the tropical rainforest of the Republic of Congo [Credit: Karline Janmaat]

Chimpanzees consume food as they encounter it and make sleeping nests at variable locations within their home range. In addition, chimpanzees (especially, the chimpanzees living in the Tai National Park, Ivory Coast, where this research was conducted) rarely use the same paths when travelling on the ground. These different ranging styles between humans and chimpanzees might shape their different spatial experience and thus the way they travel through the forest to find food in their natural habitats.

Haneul Jang and her colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology set out to study how human foragers and chimpanzees compare in their spatial movement patterns in similar rainforest environments. To this aim, the researchers measured travel linearity and speed of five Mbendjele BaYaka women from the Republic of Congo and five female chimpanzees from Tai forest when they travelled off-trail areas to out-of-sight food locations during their daily search for food in the rainforest.

Jang and her colleagues found that both the Mbendjele BaYaka people and Tai chimpanzees had, on average, similarly high levels of linearity when they travelled towards out-of-sight locations. However, the Mbendjele BaYaka and Tai chimpanzees clearly differed in the manner in which their travel linearity and speed changed with group size and familiarity with a foraging area. The Mbendjele BaYaka travelled with higher linearity in familiar areas compared to less familiar areas. This pattern was reversed in Tai chimpanzees - they moved with higher linearity and speed in less familiar areas compared to familiar areas.

Chimpanzee inspecting a tree during a foraging trip on her own in the tropical rainforest of Tai National Park, Ivory Coast [Credit: Karline Janmaat]

"One possible explanation of these differences can be their different ranging style. The Mbendjele BaYaka people stay in several seasonal camps in their lifetime range, and walk 90 percent of their travel distance on human-made trails during their foraging trips in the forest. They may therefore have less experience in less familiar off-trail areas. Hence, when the Mbendjele BaYaka people forage in these areas, their travel linearity decreases due to their searching effort", says Haneul Jang, lead author of the study. On the contrary, chimpanzees decreased travel linearity and speed in more familiar areas. "Since chimpanzee groups can be highly hostile towards each other, they might need to travel more efficiently and faster in less familiar areas, where they are more likely to encounter other chimpanzee groups", says Jang.

In addition, Jang and her colleagues found that travel linearity increased in the Mbendjele BaYaka people and decreased in Tai chimpanzees when they travelled in a larger as compared to a smaller foraging group. "When I followed the chimpanzees, I often saw them wait for each other and have apparent disagreements about where to go", says Karline Janmaat, the main supervisor of the study. "With more individuals joining the group, disagreement seemed to increase. It is therefore perhaps not surprising that when group size increased, their travel became less linear. For the Mbendjele BaYaka people we found the opposite pattern. This can have many reasons, but I like to think that it is because humans can discuss, evaluate and eventually agree about where the best food sources are, by using language, and that this helped them to travel more efficiently."

According to the authors, this study is the first necessary step needed to compare long-range spatial movement patterns of human and chimpanzee populations in their natural habitats. "Our study provides insights into how two closely related species living in similar environments can differ in their spatial movement patterns, which possibly results from their different ranging styles", says Jang. "We hope our study can contribute to expanding comparative research on spatial movement patterns to a wide range of primate species and populations, including humans, in natural environments."

The study is published in Scientific Reports.

Source: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology [July 30, 2019]

Manmade ruin adds 7,000 species to endangered 'Red List'

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on July 18, 2019 / comment : 0 Biodiversity, Ecosystems, Endangered Species, Natural Heritage, Rainforests, Wildlife

Mankind's destruction of nature is driving species to the brink of extinction at an "unprecedented" rate, the leading wildlife conservation body warned Thursday as it added more than 7,000 animals, fish and plants to its endangered "Red List".

The Roloway Monkey of Cote d'Ivoire and Ghana has fewer than 2,000 left in the wild [Credit: Sebastien Bozon/AFP]

From the canopies of tropical forests to the ocean floor, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) said iconic species of primates, rays, fish and trees were now classified as critically endangered.

The group has now assessed more than 105,000 species worldwide, around 28,000 of which risk extinction.

While each group of organisms face specific threats, human behaviour, including overfishing and deforestation, was the biggest driver of plummeting populations.

"Nature is declining at rates unprecedented in human history," said IUCN acting director general, Grethel Aguilar. "We must wake up to the fact that conserving nature's diversity is in our interest."

In May the United Nations released its generational assessment of the state of the environment. It made for grim reading.

The report warned that as many as one million species were now at risk of extinction, many within decades, as human consumption of freshwater, fossil fuels and other natural resources skyrockets.

It found that more than 90 percent of marine fish stocks are now either overfished or fished to the limit of sustainability.

The IUCN singled out a number of sea and freshwater fish that now occupy its highest threat category of "critically endangered"—the next step on the Red List is extinction.

Wedgefishes and giant guitarfishes, known collectively as Rhino Rays due to their elongated snouts, are now the most imperilled marine families on Earth.

The False Shark Ray is on the brink of extinction after overfishing in the waters off of Mauritania saw its population collapse 80 percent in the last 45 years.

Seven species of primate are closer to extinction on the new list, including the Roloway Monkey of Cote d'Ivoire and Ghana, with fewer than 2,000 individuals left in the wild.

Prime culprits are humans hunting the animals for bushmeat and "severe habitat loss" as forest is converted to land to grow food.

40 percent of all primates in West and Central Africa are now threatened with extinction, according to the IUCN.

"Species targeted by humans for food tend to become endangered much more quickly," Craig Hilton-Taylor, head of the IUCN Red List Unit, told AFP.

"Species in environments with lots of deforestation for agriculture end up being impacted."

The updated list shows that over half of Japan's freshwater fish and more than a third of Mexico's are threatened with extinction due to the loss of free-flowing rivers and increasing pollution.

More than 500 deep-sea bony fish and molluscs have been added to the list for the first time posing something of a conservation conundrum as the space they inhabit—1,000 metres (3,280 feet) beneath the surface—is often beyond national boundaries.

"The alarm bell has been sounding again and again concerning the unravelling crisis in freshwater and marine wildlife," said Andrew Terry, director of conservation and policy at the Zoological Society of London.

"Many of these ancient marine species have been around since the age of the dinosaurs and losing just one of these species would represent a loss of millions of years of evolutionary history."

Author: Patrick Galey | Source: AFP [July 18, 2019]

Climate change and deforestation together push tropical species towards extinction

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on July 08, 2019 / comment : 0 Biodiversity, Climate Change, Ecosystems, Environment, Natural Heritage, Rainforests, Wildlife

Only 38 per cent of tropical forest is 'wildlife friendly' as a result of deforestation, increasing the likelihood that vulnerable species will go extinct, say scientists.

Nevado del Ruiz, Central Colombian Andes [Credit: Professor David Edwards]

Researchers from the University of Sheffield and University of York have discovered how deforestation and climate change - two of the biggest drivers of species' extinction - interact with each other to magnify their effects.

For millennia, wildlife around the world has moved up and down mountains and towards or away from the equator to cope with changes in the Earth's temperature. The deforestation of tropical forests is creating a patchwork landscape where natural habitat is disconnected and confined to smaller spaces between a mass of farmland.

The research found that most tropical forest habitat is currently too disconnected to provide pathways to cooler climates, meaning wildlife will struggle to escape the impacts of climate change.

Tropical deforestation between 2000 - 2012 led to a vast amount of forest area, bigger than India, losing its ability to link tropical wildlife with a habitat that would protect them from rising temperatures. Today, only 38 per cent of tropical forest allows resident wildlife to avoid climate warming by moving uphill or towards the poles.

Senior author of the study, Professor David Edwards from the University of Sheffield, said: "The speed and severity with which the ability of plants and wildlife to track their optimal climates has been severed is truly shocking.

"In considering what we can do to solve this problem, we urgently need to fund mechanisms to stop tropical forest loss whilst also investing in reforestation in places where deforestation has already been most severe.

"The time to act is now and failure to do so will have catastrophic effects for tropical biodiversity over the coming century."

This loss of forest means that if species move as far as possible to the coldest places along connected temperature gradients, then under severe warming scenarios species would still, on average, suffer 2.6 degrees Celsius in warming.

Dr Rebecca Senior, who carried out this work whilst at the University of Sheffield's Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, said: "Our findings are cause for concern. We know that a huge amount of tropical rainforest has been and continues to be converted, but also that habitat loss is not the only threat to the natural world.

"Our research is the first to investigate this interaction between habitat loss and climate change at such a large scale and over time. Almost everywhere is getting warmer and for tropical species sensitive to these increasing temperatures, the lack of escape routes to cooler habitats means that warming will likely result in national and global extinctions of vulnerable species."

The research has been published in Nature Climate Change.

Source: University of Sheffield [July 08, 2019]

Big brands breaking pledge to not destroy forests: report

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on June 11, 2019 / comment : 0 Brazil, Environment, Natural Heritage, Rainforests, South America

A rainforest area the size of Spain will be destroyed by firms growing consumer staples like palm oil in the decade to 2020, industry's self-imposed deadline to end deforestation, Greenpeace said Tuesday.

Cutting rainforests down provides a double threat to the environment: it removes a vital sink for planet-warming gases in our atmosphere and produces more carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide used and expelled by industrial-scale agriculture [Credit: AFP]

Some of the world's largest consumer brands—including Nestle and Unilever—had pledged in 2010 to reach net zero deforestation within a decade through "responsible sourcing" of cattle, palm oil, soya and other commodities.

But since that pledge was signed, the pace of deforestation linked to commodities has increased "dramatically" and helped destroy at least 50 million hectares of forest, according to a new analysis carried out by Greenpeace.

"These companies are destroying our children's future by driving us towards climate and ecological collapse," said Anna Jones, global project lead for forests at Greenpeace UK.

"They've wasted a decade on half-measures and in that time, vast areas of the natural world have been destroyed."

Since 2010, the area of Brazilian rainforest planted with soya—which is used to feed animals sold for meat—has increased by 45 percent.

In Indonesia, palm oil production is up three quarters since the start of the decade and the footprint of cocoa production in the Ivory Coast has surged 80 percent, said the charity.

Bob Watson, chair of the UN's IPBES biodiversity panel that warned in April that one million species are threatened with extinction, said in a foreword to Tuesday's report that the world's agricultural system is "broken".

"If we keep producing food using current unsustainable agricultural practices, we will undermine future food production," he said.

A double threat

The 2015 Paris agreement on climate aims to limit global temperature rises to "well below" two degrees Celsius (3.6 Farenheit) and to 1.5C if possible.

Since 2010, the area of Brazilian rainforest planted with soya—which is used to feed animals sold for meat—increased 45 percent [Credit: AFP]

To do so, nations must drastically reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, yet those emissions continue to rise year-on-year.

Rainforests currently absorb up to 30 percent of all manmade greenhouse gas emissions and are vital hotspots of biodiversity, containing plants from which around a quarter of all medical drugs are made.

Cutting them down provides a double threat to the environment: it removes a vital sink for planet-warming gases in our atmosphere and produces more carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide used and expelled by industrial-scale agriculture.

The global meat industry alone is estimated to account for as much as 18 percent of all manmade emissions. Meat consumption is forecast to soar 76 percent by mid-century and emissions from livestock expected to rise in lockstep.

In addition, labyrinthine global supply chains, including processing and shipping, pump ever more greenhouse gases into the air with very little oversight from governments or monitors.

The most recent assessment by Global Forest Watch said the world lost tree cover of 24.8 million hectares in 2018—an area around the size of Britain.

Greenpeace accused firms of failing to follow through on their pledges to reduce the ruinous environmental impact their business plans were having.

"They should be in crisis talks right now, but they're still trying to grow demand for products that will drive forest destruction even further," said Jones.

The Consumer Goods Forum, which meets this week in Vancouver, told AFP that its members stood by their promises to work towards net zero deforestation.

"But over the last nine years we have also learned that the forces driving deforestation are more complex than almost any stakeholder realised in 2010," it said.

Author: Patrick Galey | Source: AFP [June 11, 2019]

Soil communities threatened by destruction, instability of Amazon forests

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on May 24, 2019 / comment : 0 Biodiversity, Brazil, Ecosystems, Environment, Natural Heritage, Rainforests

The clearing and subsequent instability of Amazonian forests are among the greatest threats to tropical biodiversity conservation today.

Invertebrates such as earthworms, ants and termites were more vulnerable to the displacement of forests with pastures than by crops, while microbes showed the opposite pattern [Credit: Andre L.C. Franco/Colorado State University]

Although the devastating consequences of deforestation to plants and animal species living above the ground are well-documented, scientists and others need to better understand how soil communities respond to this deforestation to create interventions that protect biodiversity and the ecosystem. But that information has been lacking.

A team of researchers led by Colorado State University's André Franco, a research scientist in the Department of Biology, conducted a meta-analysis of nearly 300 studies of soil biodiversity in Amazonian forests and sites in various stages of deforestation and land-use.

The new study, "Amazonian deforestation and soil biodiversity," is published in the June issue of Conservation Biology and is co-authored by CSU Distinguished Professor Diana Wall, Bruno Sobral, professor in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Pathology at CSU, and Artur Silva, professor at the Universidade Federal do Pará in Belém, Brazil.

Overall, the researchers found that the abundance, biomass, richness and diversity of soil fauna and microbes were all reduced following deforestation. Soil fauna or animals that were studied include earthworms, millipedes, dung beetles, nematodes, mites, spiders and scorpions.

Franco, who hails from Brazil, said that this is the first time that all of the available scientific data related to soil biodiversity in Amazonian forests has been synthesized.

The research team also found that the way the land is used after the forest is cleared matters to soil biodiversity. Species of invertebrates such as earthworms, ants and termites -- which are described as soil engineers -- were more vulnerable to the displacement of forests with pastures than by crops, while microbes showed the opposite pattern.

The team is currently working with farmers' associations and two research institutes in Brazil to collect and analyze soil samples, with the goal of studying the consequences of this loss of biodiversity [Credit: Andre L.C. Franco/Colorado State University]

Franco said the highest biodiversity losses were found on the side of the Amazon with the highest mean annual precipitation and in areas where the soil was very acidic.

"That means these areas should be higher priorities for conservation efforts," he said.

Scientists also uncovered gaps in existing research.

"Very few studies looked at the impact of disturbances like wildfires and selective logging on these forests," Franco said. "Yet logging is an official management strategy in the Amazon forest."

In addition, the team found a lack of data from seven of the nine countries that the Amazon biome covers parts of, including Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana.

Sobral noted that biodiversity is a hot topic and was elevated recently with the release of a report from the United Nations, which found that nature is declining globally at unprecedented rates. But most of the scientific knowledge in the world about biodiversity relates to birds and mammals, he said.

The team is continuing this research in the Amazon, working with farmers' associations and two research institutes in Brazil to collect and analyze soil samples with the goal of studying the consequences of this loss of biodiversity.

Zaid Abdo, a bioinformatics expert and associate professor in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Pathology, has joined the CSU-based research team.

Sobral said it's extremely important that the scientists work with local farmers and others who are impacted by the deforestation.

"We're very focused on making sure the research isn't disconnected from local communities' needs and aspirations," he said. "Our work is guided by what the farmers want to know and how scientific knowledge could shape their future sustainable development."

Source: Colorado State University [May 24, 2019]