The climatic istory of the Amazon basin is relevant to understand the effects of climate on forest distribution and composition. South America originally formed part of the Gondwanaland supercontinent, connected with Africa and Antarctica. Just 2 million years ago, in recent geologic time, the Isthmus of Panama closed to connect the Americas (explaining part of the distinction in North American and South American flora and fauna)....
By Liz Kimbrough
2,500+ major blazes burned across Brazil’s Legal Amazon (click here) between late May and early November. Many were on recently deforested lands, indicative of land grabbers converting forests to pastures and croplands, while others were within conserved areas and Indigenous reserves. Of concern: 41% of burns were in standing forests.
Estimates say that nearly 5.4 million acres (2.2 million hectares) of Brazil’s Amazon standing rainforest burned this year — an area roughly the size of the country of Wales in the United Kingdom.
Brazil’s soaring deforestation rates and Amazon fires point to another problem: the nation is not on track to meet its 2020 goals under the Paris Climate Agreement for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, carbon emissions in Brazil did not fall, but rose by 9.6%, in 2019, the first year of President Jair Bolsonaro’s four-year term.
Under its UN climate commitments, Brazil is only required to measure fire-related greenhouse gas emissions from newly deforested lands, not from fires in standing forests. A questionable practice, say some critics, as fires in the Amazon are routinely set by people and escape into forests. The highest CO2 emissions from forest fires in the Amazon don’t happen during the burn, but years later, a new study concludes, complicating emission estimates....
