The Amazon Rainforest Is On Fire Heres Whats At Stake
The world’s largest rainforest, the Amazon, is on fire.
The National Institute of Space Research recorded nearly 73,000 fires in the Amazon between January and August this year, more than twice as many as all of 2018. NASA satellites showed images of smoke swept across the greened terrain of Brazil. That same smoke blackened the skies of São Paulo, 1,700 miles away.
Obviously, this doesn’t bode well for the planet. But besides trees literally up in flames, there’s much more happening under the surface.
It’s the dry season in the Amazon, meaning the rainforest is more susceptible to fires. But these fires aren’t freak accidents; they’re often started intentionally. Farmers clear land for cattle ranching and miners do the same for their operations. The more the land is deforested, though, the more vulnerable the rainforest is in the long run.
“When farmers extensively use fire to clear land, it penetrates into the surrounding forest and dries it out,” says Thomas Lovejoy, senior fellow at the United Nations Foundation and member of Earth Day Network’s Global Advisory Committee. “This means that when you’re burning again next year, the forest catches fire.”
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