Fires and Amazon News

Global forest loss drops in 2013, but still tops 18M ha Forest loss in Malaysia and Indonesia, 2001-2013. Click to enlarge. Russia and Canada led the world in forest loss,…

Selective logging in Brazil. Photo by Luke Parry. Selective logging and small sub-canopy fires are degrading vast areas of rainforest across the Brazilian Amazon, contributing to largely hidden carbon emissions,…

New research published in Nature adds further evidence to the argument that drought and fire are reducing the Amazon's ability to store carbon, raising concerns that Earth's largest rainforest could…

Also see our Top 10 HAPPY environmental stories of 2013. Elephant in South Africa. The poaching crisis in Africa is number six on our annual top ten list. Photo by:…

Unchecked deforestation will have far-reaching impacts on temperature, rainfall, and monsoon cycles in regions well outside the tropics, affecting agriculture and water availability, warns a new report published by Greenpeace…

The Amazon rainforest is facing a higher risk of fires this dry season, warns a fire prediction system developed by researchers using NASA and NOAA data. The model is based…

33,000 square miles (85,500 square kilometers) or 2.8 percent of the Amazon rainforest burned between 1999-2010 finds new NASA-led research that measured the extent of fires that smolder under the…

Frequent understory fires change the composition of rainforest plant communities, potentially altering the capacity of forests to regenerate, finds a study published in special issue of the journal Philosophical Transactions…

Rainforests that have been affected by even low-intensity fires are far more vulnerable to invasion by grasses, finds a new study published in special issue of the journal Philosophical Transactions…

A new series of 5 films highlights how people use fire in the Amazon rainforest and how such practices can be mitigated. Collectively dubbed "Slash & Burn" each film explores…

Logging in Gabon, Central Africa. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. Industrial logging in primary tropical forests that is both sustainable and profitable is impossible, argues a new study in Bioscience,…

Fire in the Peruvian Amazon. The risk of fire could increase across large parts of the Amazon rainforest due to increasing incident of drought, expansion of road networks, and rural…

Sawmill in Indonesia. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Last year researchers took the first ever publicly-released video of an African golden cat (Profelis aurata) in a Gabon rainforest. This beautiful,…

Forest clearing in the Amazon. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Indigenous populations in the Amazon successfully farmed without the use of fire before the arrival of Europeans, demonstrating a potentially…

Climatic gradient across the Amazon basin. The hydrologic Amazon basin is demarcated by a thick blue line; the mean daily precipitation during the three driest months of the year are…

The Amazon rainforest can recover from logging, but has a far more difficult time returning after repeated burning, reports a new study in mongabay.com's open-access journal Tropical Conservation Science. In…

Deforestation and climate change will likely decimate much of the Amazon rainforest, says a new study by Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) and the UK's Met Office Hadley…

A new study on its way to being published shows that the Amazon rainforest suffered greatly from last year's drought. Employing satellite data and supercomputing technology, researchers have found that…

A new study in Biological Conservation has shown that edge forests and forest patches are more vulnerable to burning because they are drier than intact forests. Using eight years of…

Menghadapi wabah kebakaran hutan terburuk dalam tiga tahun, para pemilik peternakan dan suku pribumi di Amazon selatan telah bekerja sama untuk memadamkan hampir dua lusin kobaran api selama tiga bulan…

Facing the worst outbreak of forest fires in three years, cattle ranchers and indigenous tribesmen in the southern Amazon have teamed up to extinguish nearly two dozen blazes over the…

The number of fire hotspots has surged in the Bolivian and Brazilian parts of the Amazon, reveals data and imagery from NASA. NASA data presented by Brazil's National Space Research…

The number of fires burning in Brazil more than doubled compared with the same period last year. Surprisingly, the news has sparked a Twitter sensation, with more than 120,000 users…

While rates of forest loss in the Brazilian Amazon have been on the decline since 2004, the incidence of fire is increasing in the region, undermining some of the carbon…

From 2000 to 2005 the world lost over a million square kilometers of forest. Forests continue to decline worldwide, according to a new study in the Proceedings of the National…

Global forest loss has diminished since the 1990s but still remains "alarmingly high", according to a preliminary version of a new assessment from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).…

Scientists' write that press release based on study was "misleading and inaccurate". Recently, Boston University issued a press release on a scientific study regarding the Amazon's resilience to drought. The…

Fifth in a series of interviews with participants at the 2009 Association of Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC) conference. One of the most pressing issues in the conservation today is…

As the world's biggest cattle producer, Brazil braces for change While you're browsing the mall for running shoes, the Amazon rainforest is probably the farthest thing from your mind. Perhaps…

New NASA research shows a sharp decline in the amount of smoke over the Amazon during the 2008 burning season, coinciding with a drop in deforestation reported last week by…