The Amazon remains a major emitter of CO2 into the atmosphere. Forest fires in Brazil (including the entire country) destroyed 29,330 square kilometers of vegetation in the first seven months of this year, that’s an area the size of Belgium.According to a study published this Thursday by the Mapbiomas network.
According to Mapbiomas, a network, the area destroyed by fire in Brazil between January and July was 2% less than that devastated in the same period in 2021, thanks to the reduction in area devastated by key ecosystems such as the Pantanal and Atlantic Forest. collaborated by several NGOs, universities and technology companies.
Again, The area burned in the Amazon increased by 7% to approximately 14,800 square kilometers, It’s an area nearly equivalent to the sum of the communities of Asturias and Cantabria, Efe reported, aggravating the critical situation facing the world’s largest tropical forest due to increased deforestation.
According to Mapbiomas, an initiative that has technology backing from Google and whose members include international environmental organizations such as the WWF, 16% of the areas destroyed by fires in the Amazon this year occurred in dense tropical forest areas, so they are protected..
According to research, Three out of every four hectares destroyed by fires this year in Brazil corresponds to native vegetationmostly natural areas and one-fifth to forests.
The study revealed that the Brazilian ecosystem, where the area ravaged by the fires has grown the most this year, is the Pampa (a biome in the south of the country and shared with Argentina and Uruguay), a 3,372% jump from the same period last year.
The area devastated by the fire in Pampa between January and July was 286 square kilometers, equivalent to that of the Maldives.
In contrast, the area devastated by fire in the first seven months of the year in the Pantanal decreased by 19% to 760 square kilometers, the lowest rate in four years, while the Atlantic Forest decreased by 19 people. %. , up to 143 square kilometers.
Between January and July, the area devastated by the fires in Cerrado (Brazilian savanna) decreased by 9% to 12,504 square kilometers. However, this area is 39% larger than the same period in 2020 and 5% larger than the first seven months of 2019.
The data described is part of the Fire Monitor, A new version of the MapBiomas platform that measures forest fires in Brazil and this is characterized by the elaboration of the area actually destroyed in different ecosystems.
Unlike studies published monthly by the state’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE), which offer data on areas where hotspots have been recorded at a given time to help fight fires, the MapBiomas platform offers an X-ray called “scars.” your fire”.
Effectively measuring the area devastated by fire, The initiative uses images from the European satellite Sentinel 2, which has a higher spatial resolution and passes over the same spot more frequently than the satellites used by INPE.
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