Amazon Rainforest & Deforestation Watch Thread

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Yuli Ban
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Amazon Rainforest & Deforestation Watch Thread

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'Biggest Story in the World Right Now': Humanity Has Flipped Amazon From Carbon Sink to Source
Following years of warnings and mounting fears among scientists, "terrifying" research revealed Wednesday that climate change and deforestation have turned parts of the Amazon basin, a crucial "sink," into a source of planet-heating carbon dioxide.

Though recent research has elevated concerns about the Amazon putting more CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than it absorbs, the new findings, published in the journal Nature, were presented as a "first" by scientists and climate reporters.

From 2010 to 2018, researchers for the new study—led by Luciana Gatti of Brazil's National Institute for Space Research—conducted "vertical profiling measurements" of carbon dioxide and monoxide a few miles above the tree canopy at four sites in Amazonia.

The researchers found that "Southeastern Amazonia, in particular, acts as a net carbon source" and "total carbon emissions are greater in eastern Amazonia than in the western part." The former, they noted, has been "subjected to more deforestation, warming, and moisture stress" than the latter in recent decades.
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Even with a decree banning fires, flames and clouds of smoke were seen near the city of Novo Progresso, in southern Pará, Brazil, on August 15, 2020. (Photo: Ernesto Carriço/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future
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Re: Amazon Rainforest & Deforestation Watch Thread

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Next Brazilian election is October 2022.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Braz ... l_election


There's a very good chance that Bolsonaro can be defeated. His approval rating has been steadily eroding.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_p ... presidency
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Amazon rainforest ‘will collapse if Bolsonaro remains president’
Brazilian academics and activists issue warning amid fresh assault on environmental protections
The collapse of the Amazon rainforest is inevitable if Jair Bolsonaro remains president of Brazil, academics and environmental activists have warned amid a fresh government assault on protections for the forest.

Despite evidence that fire, drought and land clearance are pushing the Amazon towards a point of no return, they say the far-right leader is more interested in placating the powerful agribusiness lobby and tapping global markets that reward destructive behaviour.

The onslaught on forest safeguards has picked up pace. On Wednesday the lower house was due to vote on legislation that would reward land grabbers by legalising ownership of property that had been illegally invaded and cleared before 2014.
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So sad. :(


Illegal logging reaches Amazon’s untouched core, ‘terrifying’ research shows

by Juliana Ennes on 15 September 2021

One of the main fears about the Brazilian Amazon is beginning to materialize: logging is starting to move from the periphery of the rainforest toward the core of the biome, groundbreaking new research shows.

Tracking cut trees through satellite mapping data, the research found that logging activities cleared 464,000 hectares (1.15 million acres) of the Brazilian Amazon — an area three times the size of the city of São Paulo — between August 2019 and July 2020. More than half (50.8%) of the logging was reportedly concentrated in the state of Mato Grosso, followed by Amazonas (15.3%) and Rondônia (15%).

“Around 20 years ago, we feared that the forest would be devastated in the so-called ‘deforestation arch’ and the movement would migrate from the peripheral areas toward the central region of the Amazon,” said Marco Lentini, senior project coordinator of Imaflora, a sustainable development NGO involved in the mapping project. “Our map shows this is happening now: logging is going toward the Amazon core.”

He said the logging pattern was that of “frontier migration,” adding, “This is something that terrifies us. We have to stabilize this frontier.”

https://news.mongabay.com/2021/09/illeg ... rch-shows/


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Amazon deforestation hits 15-year high

22nd November 2021

Deforestation in the Amazon rainforest has reached its highest level since 2006, according to new data released by the Brazilian government.

The National Institute for Space Research (NISR), part of Brazil's Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovations, is responsible for monitoring the Amazon and has published a report showing its current status. According to the NISR, deforestation increased by 22% during the last year – from 10,851 sq km (4,190 sq mi) to 13,235 sq km (5,110 sq mi).

[...]

From the mid-2000s onwards, following decades of rampant deforestation, tree loss in Brazil began to undergo a dramatic slowdown. The country seemed to have turned a corner. However, after reaching a low in 2012, deforestation in the Amazon ticked up again. Since the election of Jair Bolsonaro on 1st January 2019, which soon led to a gutting of environmental protections, this trend has accelerated further. An area of rainforest the size of a football field is now being cleared in Brazil every 17 seconds. Over the span of a year, that amounts to 1,855,058 football field-sized losses.

Read more: https://www.futuretimeline.net/blog/202 ... meline.htm


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The Great Amazon Land Grab – How Brazil’s Government is Turning Public Land Private, Clearing the Way for Deforestation
by Gabriel Cardoso Carrero, Cynthia S. Simmons, and Robert T. Walker

https://theconversation.com/profiles/ro ... ker-667958

Introduction:
(The Conversation) Imagine that several state legislators decide that Yellowstone National Park is too big. Also imagine that, working with federal politicians, they change the law to downsize the park by a million acres, which they sell in a private auction.

Outrageous? Yes. Unheard of? No. It happens routinely and with increasing frequency in the Brazilian Amazon.

The most widely publicized threat to the Amazonian rainforest is deforestation. Less well understood is that public lands are being converted to private holdings in a land grab we’ve been studying for the past decade.

Much of this land is cleared for cattle ranches and soybean farms, threatening biodiversity and the Earth’s climate. Prior research has quantified how much public land has been grabbed, but only for one type of public land called “undesignated public forests.”

Our research provides a complete account across all classes of public land. We looked at Amazonia’s most active deforestation frontier, southern Amazonas State, starting in 2012 as rates of deforestation began to increase because of loosened regulatory oversight. Our research shows how land grabs are tied to accelerating deforestation spearheaded by wealthy interests, and how Brazil’s National Congress, by changing laws, is legitimizing these land grabs.
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January deforestation in the Amazon highest in 14 years

by Mongabay.com on 11 February 2022

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon last month was the highest of any January dating back to 2008, reports Brazil’s national space research agency INPE.

According to data released today, 430 square miles of rainforest was chopped down in January, a 400% rise over January 2021 when 86 square kilometers was lost. The average extent of deforestation in January for the past 15 years has been 171 square kilometers.

https://news.mongabay.com/2022/02/janua ... -14-years/


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Amazon Rainforest is Losing Resilience: New Evidence from Satellite Data Analysis
March 7, 2022

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/945425

Introduction:
(EurekAlert) The Amazon rainforest is likely losing resilience, data analysis from high-resolution satellite images suggests. This is due to stress from a combination of logging and burning – the influence of human-caused climate change is not clearly determinable so far, but will likely matter greatly in the future. For about three quarters of the forest, the ability to recover from perturbation has been decreasing since the early 2000s, which the scientists see as a warning sign. The new evidence is derived from advanced statistical analysis of satellite data of changes in vegetation biomass and productivity.

“Reduced resilience – the ability to recover from perturbations like droughts or fires – can mean an increased risk of dieback of the Amazon rainforest. That we see such a resilience loss in observations is worrying,” says Niklas Boers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the Technical University of Munich, who conducted the study jointly with researchers from the University of Exeter, UK.

“The Amazon rainforest is a home to a unique host of biodiversity, strongly influences rainfall all over South America by way of its enormous evapotranspiration, and stores huge amounts of carbon that could be released as greenhouse gases in the case of even partial dieback, in turn contributing to further global warming,” Boers explains. “This is why the rainforest is of global relevance.”

“When the tipping itself will be observable, it would be too late”

The Amazon is considered a potential tipping element in the Earth system and a number of studies revealed its vulnerability. “However, computer simulation studies of its future yield quite a range of results,” says Boers. “We’ve therefore been looking into specific observational data for signs of resilience changes during the last decades. We see continuously decreasing rainforest resilience since the early 2000s, but we cannot tell when a potential transition from rainforest to savanna might happen. When it will be observable, it would likely be too late to stop it.” The research is part of the project 'Tipping Points in the Earth System' (TiPES) funded by European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme.
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