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]