guentermanaus/Shutterstock
Rainforest fires heat the planet, but the degraded forest left behind has far more consequences for the local environment.
The First Mass in Brazil (1860) by Victor Meirelles.
Wikipedia
After five centuries of extraction, the Amazon region stands on the brink.
Members of the Huni Kuin community survey the damage after a fire on August 22.
Centro Huwã Karu Yuxibu via Facebook
Huwã Karu Yuxibu, the cultural centre of the Huni Kuin indigenous group in the Amazonian state of Acre, was destroyed by fire in August.
A fireman works to extinguish a fire at a forest near Porto Velho, Brazil.
Joedson Alves/EPA
You didn’t cause the fires, but you can help prevent them spreading.
Laszlo Mates / Shutterstock
Fire doesn’t have to be destructive. For many in the Amazon, it is part of their livelihood and culture.
Fire burning in the upper Amazon River basin near Porto Velho on August 15.
Satelitte Image ©2019 Maxar Technologies/EPA
What the Amazon fires mean for Jair Bolsonaro politically.
Fire consumes an area near Jaci Parana, state of Rondonia, Brazil, Aug. 24, 2019.
AP Photo/Eraldo Peres
If the Amazon rainforest functions as our planet’s lungs, what do raging wildfires threaten? An atmospheric scientist explains why the fires, though devastating, won’t suffocate life on Earth.
Adam Ronan
Rainforest species didn’t co-evolve with fire – and even a low intensity wildfire can kill half the trees.
Firefighters and volunteers have been working around the clock to tackle the flames.
Ipa Ibañez
While the world watches the Brazilian Amazon burn, across the border in Bolivia it’s also ablaze.
A fire in the Amazon rainforest near Humaita, in Amazonas state, Brazil, Aug. 17, 2019.
Reuters/Ueslei Marcelino
Don’t blame climate change for the 39,000 forest fires now incinerating huge tracts of the Brazilian Amazon. This environmental catastrophe is human-made and highly political.
Huge fires are raging across multiple regions of the Amazon Basin.
Guaira Maia/ISA
The Amazon is burning at record levels, and land clearing is to blame. The good news: we already know what we need to do to stop it.
The Atewa Forest is at the heart of a conservation battle in Ghana.
Arocha Ghana photo
Ghana’s quest to fill a significant infrastructure deficit has led to a barter deal with China that threatens one of West Africa’s most important environmental spaces.
Indonesia makes permanent its forest moratorium to save remaining primary forests and peatlands.
Ruanda Agung Sugardiman/AusAID/flickr
Indonesia has permanently banned new clearing of primary forest and peatland. Here are three benefits of the policy.
Farming emits greenhouse gases, but the land can also store them.
Johny Goerend/Unsplash
The world has no hope of reaching the goals of the Paris Agreement without seriously reducing emissions from agriculture, forestry and land clearing.
Tarcisio Schnaider / shutterstock
Brazil’s deforestation rate is back up. The UN Security Council has three main options.
Inga Linder/Shutterstock
Could our best shot at stopping climate catastrophe be restoring forests on a massive scale?
Children play in a cabbage patch near their home in Modderspruit, near Rustenburg, South Africa.
EFE-EPA/Halden Krog
The abandonment of crop farming fields isn’t new. But some researchers say it’s accelerated in the last two decades.
Palm oil plantation in Cigudeg, Bogor, 2008.
Achmad Rabin Taim/Flickr
Demand for palm and other vegetable oils is rising sharply, raising questions about which ones will be produced, who will control their production and sale, and where they will be grown.
Botswana’s Okavango Delta.
Shutterstock
Our work represents the first assessment of what social and economic factors are connected to environmental degradation across the entire African continent.
Lake sediment tells an ancient story of trees, soil – and disaster.
Dr. Niklas Leicher, University of Cologne
Thousands of years of history tells the same story over and over: you ignore soil at your peril.