Amazon Fire: Why is part of the Amazon burning?

thousands of fires burning in Amazon don't look like major forest fires of Europe or rth America inste, y are fuelled mainly by branches, vegetation and or byproducts of deforestation in cleared areas, experts say. dramatic scale of this year's fires is result of a significant acceleration of deforestation for lumber industry, for agriculture or for or human activities.

"In tropics, fire is used extensively in a land-use environment," said Jeffrey Chambers, a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a specialist in rainforests. "It's how you get rid of your agricultural waste products... And part of reason why that works is because those fires don't generally move into forest," he explained.

A tropical rainforest is generally t flammable because it's so humid. California has opposite problem: burning waste is prohibited because forests are so dry, y could go up in flames at smallest spark. But in Amazon, when an area of forest is cleared, tree trunks are removed and rest of vegetation is burned on spot during dry season, which lasts from July to vember.

For farmland, or for prairies, brush and weeds alike are heaped toger, waiting for dry season. That's what is burning right w. Even when fire mans to penetrate dense forest called "primary" when it is still untouched  it usually stays in vegetation at ground level and generally does t reach treetops, about 100 feet (30 metres) up. effect is just as devastating, though, because tree trunks are damd at ground level, but overall im differs vastly from massive fires that Europeans or Americans are used to seeing.

Human use of fire to man land explains astromical number of fires more than 75,000 recorded by Brazilian authorities since January. fires have me deforestation visible, according to Paulo Brando, an assistant professor at University of California, Irvine and a scientist at Woods Hole Research Centre. "You can see fires as final phase of deforestation," he said.

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Amazon deforestation began in earnest in 1970s, reaching its peak rate at end of 1990s and start of 2000s. In 2004, about 11,000 square miles (28,000 square kilometers) of forest h been cleared in Brazil alone ( Amazon spres over nine countries, but 60 percent of rainforest is in Brazil). Deforestation n slowed down significantly. It picked up again in 2014, but it never reached same level as previous dece.

Last year, about 2,900 square miles disappeared, according to Brazil's National Institute for Research (INPE). But trend reversal is worrisome. In July alone, more than 870 square miles were cleared. ditionally, dry season isn't over. Will fires bite into intact forest? "Right w, we are seeing mostly increases in deforestation-related fires, which may or may t escape into primary forests, depending on how dry it's going to get in next few months," said Brando.

And how will that affect climate change? Forests contain carbon, stored in trees and vegetation -- to tune of 459 tonnes per hectare in Amazon, said Diego Navarrete, a carbon specialist at NGO Nature Conservancy. When a tree is cut, carbon inside will reenter atmosphere years later, at end of its use cycle when it decomposes. When vegetation is burned, as is happening w, carbon enters atmosphere immediately. In both cases, carbon will be released. It just takes some simple math to realize that total for past few months has alrey reached hundreds of millions of tonnes of carbon.

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