forestfire
More droughts are coming, and the Amazon can’t keep up: Study
The world’s largest rainforest makes its own weather. Up to half of all the rainfall in the Amazon comes from the forest itself, as moisture is recycled from the trees to the atmosphere and back again. So, what happens as droughts grow more severe and less rain enters the system? For every three trees that […]
Even without human-driven deforestation, climate change threatens some forests
When it comes to climate solutions, trees are in vogue right now. From the Trillion Tree Campaign to the stream of vigorous — if somewhat vague — promises made at last year’s COP26 climate conference to halt global deforestation, harnessing the carbon-sequestering power of forests has become a goal of governments, cities, and policymakers across […]
Forest fires are getting worse, 20 years of data confirm
Across Russia, Europe, Indonesia, the Amazon Basin, North America, Australia, and beyond, we have watched fires blaze across landscapes, causing immense damage to life and land. Now, a new analysis confirms what many have witnessed firsthand and in the news: forest fires are getting worse. Researchers at Global Forest Watch, an environmental monitoring platform developed […]
In Indonesia’s forest fire capital, the dry season brings yet more burning
JAKARTA — Fires are flaring up in Indonesia’s Riau province, the perennial epicenter of the burning season in Sumatra, as the dry season sets in. At the end of March, fires had burned nearly 169 hectares (417 acres) of land in Riau, where large swaths of forests and peatlands have been burned to make way […]
As dry season starts in Indonesia, risk of fires — and haze — looms
JAKARTA — A new analysis warns of the potential for forest fires in Indonesia that could spread smoke to neighboring countries as this year’s dry season sets in, following two years of haze-free skies across this part of Southeast Asia. In their “Haze Outlook 2022” report, researchers at the Singapore Institute of International Affairs (SIIA) […]
Sumatra palm plantations the usual suspects as unusual burning razes peatlands
JAKARTA — Fires in areas of carbon-intense peatland forest on the island of Sumatra appear to have been set in and around oil palm plantation concessions and could signal the start of another season of forest-razing burns in Indonesia. The fires burned 6,168 hectares (15,241 acres) of peatlands — an area 18 times the size […]
2021 tropical forest loss figures put zero-deforestation goal by 2030 out of reach
JAKARTA — Tropical forest loss remained consistently high in 2021 with no sign of slowing down, despite commitments by companies and governments to curb deforestation, according to new data from the University of Maryland. The data, available on the Global Forest Watch platform managed by the World Resources Institute (WRI), show that tropical countries lost […]
Indonesia’s new epicenter of forest fires shifts away from Sumatra and Borneo
JAKARTA — Indonesia’s land and forest fires burned a greater area this year than in 2020, with most of the fires occurring in West Nusa Tenggara and East Nusa Tenggara, two provinces that were until recently not major sites of burning. As of the end of November, fires had burned 353,222 hectares (872,831 acres) of […]
The Brazilian Amazon is burning, again
In recent weeks, nine major fires have ignited in the Brazilian Amazon, heralding the start of another fire season which, after a particularly dry year, experts say could be a bad one. “The rainy season is already finished and it was a bad [dry] rainy season,” Marcelo Seluchi, a meteorologist in Brazil’s national space research […]