21st Century drought-related fires counteract the decline of Amazon deforestation carbon emissions

Aragão, Luiz E. O. C.; Anderson, Liana O.; Fonseca, Marisa Gesteira; Rosan, Thais M.; Vedovato, Laura Barbosa; Wagner, Fabien; Silva, Camila V. J.; Silva, Celso; Arai, Egídio; Aguiar, Ana Paula Dutra; Barlow, Jos; Berenguer, Erika; Deeter, Merritt N.; Domingues, Lucas G.; Gatti, Luciana V.; Gloor, Manuel; Malhi, Yadvinder; Marengo, José A.; Miller, J. B.; Phillips, Oliver L.; Saatchi, Sassan

doi:10.1038/s41467-017-02771-y

Cited by 629 publications

(623 citation statements)

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“…The Amazon deforestation rates after 2015, reached around 6200 km²/year, if compared with previous measures, accomplished a 66% reduction (ARAGÃO et al, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 82%

Characterization of physical properties of aerosols atmospheric on regions affected by burning biomass in Brazil

Rothmund

Palácios

Marques

et al. 2018

RHE

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This study aimed to characterize the physical properties of aerosols on the north and west-central Brazil. These regions are strongly impacted by seasonality of physical and chemical properties of aerosols, due mainly to the high levels of biomass burning during the dry season. The analysis was performed on four sites in the network AERONET, two in the Amazon biome and two in the savanna (locally known as Cerrado) in order to verify the possible difference between the properties of aerosols from the burning of forest and pasture in the Brazilian Cerrado. We used data from a u-level 1.5 from January 2000 to July 2015.There was a seasonal variation on the depth perspective of aerosols in the range of 675 nm (AOD 675 nm) on all sites examined, with the peaks reached in the dry season due the great contribution of particles from biomass burning. The values of single scattering albedo in the range of 675 nm (SSA 675 nm) showed little variation, including between wet and dry seasons. It was noted that the values of SSA for the regions located in the Cerrado biome were slightly smaller than the values obtained for the depots located in the Amazon biome. The contributions of particulate matter from biomass burning during the dry season about the Amazon region substantially increase the properties of scattering of radiation in the atmosphere. About Cuiabá and Campo Grande (Cerrado) it was noted that in the wet season there is predominance of urban emissions and dust from the ground and in the dry season particles of biomass burning. However, for the dry season it was verified that the particulate material on these regions is more fuel than the aerosols present in the regions of the Amazon biome.Keyword: Aerosol optical depth. Single scattering albedo. Matrix of Angstrom.Resumo: Este estudo teve como objetivo caracterizar as propriedades físicas dos aerossóis no norte e centrooeste do Brasil. Estas regiões são fortemente impactadas pela sazonalidade das propriedades físicas e químicas dos aerossóis, devido principalmente aos altos níveis de queima de biomassa durante a estação seca. A análise foi realizada em quatro sites da rede AERONET, dois no bioma amazônico e dois na savana (conhecida localmente como cerrado) para verificar a possível diferença entre as propriedades dos aerossóis da queima de floresta e pastagem no cerrado brasileiro. Foram utilizados dados de nível 1.5 de janeiro de 2000 a julho de 2015. Houve variação sazonal da profundidade ótica de aerossóis na faixa de 675 nm (AOD 675 nm) em todos os locais estudados, com os picos alcançados na estação seca devido à grande 1 Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso (UFMT), Cuiabá, MT. Emails: (lucasdouglasrothmund@gmail.com, rafael.pgfa@gmail.com, jbassofisico@gmail.com, luciogboliveira@gmail.com, leonecurado@gmail.com

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“…The Amazon deforestation rates after 2015, reached around 6200 km²/year, if compared with previous measures, accomplished a 66% reduction (ARAGÃO et al, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 82%

Characterization of physical properties of aerosols atmospheric on regions affected by burning biomass in Brazil

Rothmund

Palácios

Marques

et al. 2018

RHE

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“…Since the total area of a specific age class could interfere with fire frequency, that is, more area would mean higher probability of fire occurrence, we normalized the fire frequency by the area (ha) of its respective age class within the buffer with most fire occurrences, in the year of fire occurrence. Severe droughts affected Amazonia in 2005, 2010 and 2015/2016, 10 and especially the southwest in 2005 (Aragão et al, 2007;Phillips et al, 2009;Lewis et al, 2011;Aragão et al, 2018). As drought years can enhance fire occurrence in Amazonia (e.g., Brando et al, 2014;Aragão et al, 2018), we analyzed separately the fire frequency in regular and drought years.…”

Section: Relationship Between Bamboo Die-off Events and Modis Active mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Severe droughts affected Amazonia in 2005, 2010 and 2015/2016, 10 and especially the southwest in 2005 (Aragão et al, 2007;Phillips et al, 2009;Lewis et al, 2011;Aragão et al, 2018). As drought years can enhance fire occurrence in Amazonia (e.g., Brando et al, 2014;Aragão et al, 2018), we analyzed separately the fire frequency in regular and drought years. In order to assess the influence of ignition sources on the fire occurrence, we filtered active fire detections using buffers of 1, 2 and 3 km around the non-forested areas using the yearly non-forest fraction mask and assessed the number of active fire detections considering each buffer.…”

Section: Relationship Between Bamboo Die-off Events and Modis Active mentioning

confidence: 99%

Life cycle of bamboo in southwestern Amazon and its relation to fire events

Dalagnol¹,

Wagner²,

Galvão³

et al. 2018

Preprint

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Abstract. Bamboo-dominated forests comprise 1% of the world's forests. In southwest Amazon, a prior investigation mapped 16.15 million ha of bamboo-dominated forests by visual interpretation of Landsat and MODIS satellite images. They observed that the near infrared (NIR) wavelength was important to discriminate adult and dead bamboo areas, and estimated an average life cycle of 28 years for the Guadua spp. bamboo that dominate the region. In these bamboo areas, flowering a nd fruiting occur once in a lifetime before death, which produce massive quantities of necromass. The 'bamboo-fire hypothesis' argues 5 that increased dry fuel after die-off enhances fire probability, creating opportunities that favor bamboo. In this study, we developed and validated a method to map the bamboo die-off and its spatial distribution using satellite-derived time series of vegetation reflectance from MODIS (MAIAC) data and explored the fire hypothesis by evaluating the relationship between bamboo die-off and fires detected by MODIS thermal anomalies product in southwest Amazon. Our findings show that the NIR is the most sensitive spectral interval to characterize bamboo growth and cohort age. Automatic detection of historical The 'bamboo-fire hypothesis' was not fully supported, because most bamboo cohorts did not burn after die-off. Nonetheless, fire occurrence was 45% higher in dead than live bamboo in drought years, associated with ignition sources from land use, suggesting a bamboo-human-fire association. Since fire favors bamboo development, this may contribute to the maintenance 15 of high bamboo density where it is already present, the expansion of bamboo into adjacent bamboo-free forests, or even bring deadly consequences to these adjacent forests under climate change effects.

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“…From the wet tropics to the boreal north, fire is a ubiquitous part of forests. Now, owing to their human impacts, wildfires in the boreal forests (e.g., Kelly et al, 2013), in tropical forests (e.g., Aragão et al, 2018), and everywhere in between, are drawing public attention owing to their frequency and severity. Recent increases in fire frequency and severity are forcing significant re-thinking of the roles of episodic events in global carbon budgets.…”

Section: Firementioning

confidence: 99%