Fires in the Amazon and throughout South America have raged for weeks, but capturing the true scale will require cooperation between scientists, indigenous people, and reporters on the ground, an expert says.
The fires have sparked dire predictions about climate change, criticism of the Brazilian government over increased deforestation, and a viral moment of social media grief coalescing around the hashtag #PrayforAmazonia.
These are far from the first fires in the region, but they’re occurring with record frequency. Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research reported in mid-September that the some 100,000 wildfires in the country so far in 2019 mark a 45% increase over the same time period last year. Similar fires in Indonesia, many of which were deliberately set to make room for palm plantations, have also raised concerns.
This development has global consequences. For example, the Amazon forests contain 10 to 20% of the carbon in all of Earth’s ecosystems. Having those stores rise to the atmosphere in the form of CO2 could dangerously accelerate global warming, scientists say.
Many news accounts have offered scientific perspectives that put the burning Amazon—and its impact on climate change—in context, but, given the scale and complexity of the issue, it can be hard to know which interpretations to trust.
Here, Matthew Hayek, an assistant professor in the environmental studies department at New York University, talks about the most reliable methods for assessing the scale and significance of the fires:
The post Reports may ‘dangerously underestimate’ Amazon fires appeared first on Futurity.
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