Technical note – Amazon on fire

22 de August de 2019

Aug 22, 2019

Divino Silvério, Sonaira Silva, Ane Alencar, Paulo Moutinho

Fire is a well-known element in rural Brazil. It is a commonly used tool to get rid of fallen forests and to manage pastures and other types of land use These fires frequently escape from open fields into primary tropical forests and can ignite catastrophic wildfires (Nepstad et al., 1999). In the Amazon, fire activity peaks during drought years, when deforestation, management, and forest fires can easily get out of control (Alencar et al., 2015).

This technical note evaluates this year’s dry season. IPAM used several geospatial data sources derived from satellites to compare this year’s fire season with previous ones.

* Aug 25: date update in capture on Figure 1.

*Aug 28: update on the number at the Mendonça et., all 2004 reference.

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Fire, fragmentation, and windstorms: A recipe for tropical forest degradation

Fire, fragmentation, and windstorms: A recipe for tropical forest degradation

Widespread degradation of tropical forests is caused by a variety of disturbances that interact in ways that are not well understood. To explore potential synergies between edge effects, fire and windstorm damage as causes of Amazonian forest degradation, we quantified vegetation responses to a 30‐min, high‐intensity windstorm that in 2012, swept through a large‐scale fire experiment that borders an agricultural field. Our pre‐ and postwindstorm measurements include tree mortality rates and modes of death, above‐ground biomass, and airborne LiDAR‐based estimates of tree heights and canopy disturbance (i.e., number and size of gaps). The experimental area in the southeastern Amazonia includes three 50‐ha plots established in 2004 that were unburned (Control), burned annually (B1yr), or burned at 3‐year intervals (B3yr).