Forest fires in the Amazon intensify every year. Images of burning forests in Brazil, Bolivia and other Amazon countries become more frequent each year. Between 2001 and 2020, at least 120 million hectares of Amazonian forests were affected by fire, a figure that corresponds to the sum of what is burned each year, according to satellite analyzes carried out by the Amazon Network of Georeferenced Socio-environmental Information ( RAISG). In percentage terms, it is estimated that 14% of the Amazon biome has already been damaged by fires. RAISG data also indicates that every year, 17 million hectares of forests in the Amazon, on average, are damaged by fire. In 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, this figure rose to 27 million hectares. Forest fires impact 16 million hectares, on average, in the Chaco, the Chiquitania and the Amazon each year. Photo: CEJIS. “Fire, every year, puts the Amazon in a deep crisis,” says Marlene Quintanilla, director of research at the Friends of Nature Foundation. To monitor, in real time, forest fires and other pressures that occur in the Amazon biome, the RAISG developed a new platform, which they called AMA. This platform also allows you to see how deforestation is progressing in the nine Amazon countries. According to the evaluation made between 2000 and 2020, 54 million hectares of Amazon forests were lost in these 20 years, an extension equivalent to…This article was originally published on Mongabay
