Study reaffirms that forest loss in the Amazon contributes to global warming

Marcela Leiros – From Cenarium Magazine

MANAUS – The Amazon Forest may be contributing to warming the global atmosphere, instead of cooling the planet’s climate. This is what indicates the international study “Carbon and Beyond: The Biogeochemistry of Climate in a Rapidly Changing Amazon”, published last week by the Swiss journal Frontiers in Forests and Global Change.

The study has the participation of researchers from all over the world, including those from the National Institute for Research in the Amazon (Inpa / MCTI).

Considered the first extensive analysis of all greenhouse gases that affect natural activity in the Amazon, the article reveals that the net effect of the region is probably heating the climate and its continued loss will cause more damage not only to the location but also to the world. (The liquid state is the balance of all negative and positive impacts in terms of global warming.)

According to Inpa researcher, Philip Fearnside, the Amazon has a wide variety of effects on global warming. “The work shows that the net effect of the region is negative since the beneficial effects have been decreasing and the emissions that cause the greenhouse effect have increased, including some impacts until now little known, such as the emission of methane by the forest”.

The positive effects of the Amazon Rainforest include the absorption of carbon by the standing forest, which is a benefit that has decreased significantly over the past few years and has acted as a “brake” on the heating process. There is also reabsorption of carbon by the growth of secondary forests, in areas already deforested.

On the other hand, there are impacts on carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation by logging, tree mortality in extreme weather events, such as droughts, typhoons, and floods, and there are emissions from the forest itself and naturally flooded areas and hydroelectric power plants.

The Amazon Basin contains the largest tropical forest in the world, which represents more than 60% of the remaining tropical forests on the planet. In the Amazon Basin, tens of millions of people depend on services provided by the Amazon Forest, which is home to more species of plants and animals than any other terrestrial ecosystem on the planet.

Deforestation

The nine states that make up the Legal Amazon have lost in the last 18 years the total of 334,497 thousand square kilometers of forest. According to a survey by Cenarium Magazine, the states of Pará, Mato Grosso and Rondônia lead the index released by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).

The loss of native vegetation, that is, forest and countryside areas, can be compared to the total area of ​​Japan (377,975 km²), or more than twice that of Greece (131,990 km²). The comparison was made using data from the agency’s Coverage and Land Use Monitoring, which covered the years 2000 to 2018.

According to the IBGE, only the state of Pará lost 118,302 km² of territory, while Mato Grosso registered a reduction of 93,906 km² and Rondônia 38,532 km² of forest and countryside area. The institute’s list follows with the loss of all other states in the region: Tocantins (-28.235 mil km²), Amazonas (-19.648 km²), Maranhão (-18.399 km²), Acre (8.857 km²), Roraima (-6.963 km²) e Amapá (-1.655 km²).