is the amazon rainforest always on fire?
148567
The Amazon hasn't stopped burning. There were 19,925 fire outbreaks last month, and 'more fires' are in the future. Advocacy organization Rainforest Alliance blames decreased enforcement of forest law, illegal deforestation and invasion of indigenous territories for rise in fire outbreaks.
1187391
Fires are burning in other parts of the Amazon as well as other forest ecosystems in the region, including Bolivia, Paraguay and Peru. But most of the international attention has been focused on Brazil, which contains about 60 percent of the Amazon rainforest.
175554
Then, they match those sites up with the location of fires burning today. Most of the fires burning today match up with spots where trees were felled earlier in the year, says Alencar. Through July 2019 over 7,200 square miles of the Brazilian rainforest has burned—an aggregated area nearly the size of New Jersey.
231877
As the rainforest decreases, so does its ability to support the rest of the planet. Large forests absorb carbon from the atmosphere, slowing the pace of climate change. Burning the Amazon means humanity is sabotaging its own life support system.
1366453
Most are caused by human activity, especially clearing lands for farming. From June to December, the southern Amazon Basin dries out, and fires can become a concern. ... “The majority of the fires we're seeing now are because of deforestation,” she says.
267458
Forest fires do happen in the Amazon during the dry season between July and October. They can be caused by naturally occurring events, like lightning strikes, but this year most are thought to have been started by farmers and loggers clearing land for crops or grazing.
631284
(CNN) The Amazon is burning -- and humans are likely to blame. Environmental organizations and researchers say the wildfires blazing in the Brazilian rainforest were set by cattle ranchers and loggers who want to clear and utilize the land, emboldened by the country's pro-business president.
1250927
Number of Blazes Dropped in September, 2019 Total Still a Record High. Fires still blaze across the Amazon rainforest in South America, at a rate that continues to surpass the number of fires in 2018. ... That was a 35 percent decline from August, when somewhere near 31,000 fires burned.
197075
The wildfires in Australia have burned a massive expanse of land. ... That's 5,000 square miles (an area about the size of Connecticut), more than the area of land that burned during 2019's devastating Amazon rainforest fires and 80 times larger than the total area burned in the 2019 California wildfires.
1271694
In some years, like in 1998 and 2005, that deforestation activity coincided with major El Niño droughts, and fires were abundant and widespread. The Amazon did not evolve to burn, but for centuries, fire has been used to clear space in the rainforest for agricultural crops, from soybeans to palm to cattle.
235886
Most of the fires burning today match up with spots where trees were felled earlier in the year, says Alencar. Through July 2019 over 7,200 square miles of the Brazilian rainforest has burned—an aggregated area nearly the size of New Jersey.
998765
"When trees gets burned and carbon is released into the atmosphere, that exacerbates our global warming." Fires aside, deforestation in the Amazon already releases half a billion tons of carbon dioxide each year, according to WWF.
251763
“There is no question the 2019 Amazon fires were unusual, but they were unusual in specific areas and ways,” said Douglas Morton, chief of the Biospheric Sciences Laboratory at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.
1067027
Yes, the Amazon on fire. ... So far this year, more than 72,000 forest fires have started (or been set by cattle ranchers) in Brazil's rain forest. That's an 80% increase over the same period last year. But the amount of CO2 emitted from the fires is lower than in 2010 and significantly lower than in the early 2000s.
262867
Scientists and environmentalists say the reason the Amazon is on fire is because farmers are deliberately starting blazes in their efforts to clear land for crops or livestock. One researcher estimated that humans start 99% of all Amazon rainforest fires. Such fires are a major cause of deforestation in the Amazon.
228754
The Amazon rainforest, the vessel holding a massive amount of the world's oxygen, is burning at a rate scientists have never seen before. The National Institute for Space Research (INPE) has recorded more than 74,000 fires so far this year – an 84 per cent increase on the same period in 2018.
279290
Most are caused by human activity, especially clearing lands for farming. The fires themselves are destructive and devastating, but their primary cause is more concerning, says Ane Alencar, the director of science at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM).