Who let the humans out?

There’s one thing I’ve touched on in previous posts but not gone into much detail on yet. Why has so much deforestation been occurring since the 1970s? Well, there’s a number of reasons.

The first is, surprisingly, a natural cause. Natural fires, not to be confused with anthropogenic fires, occur in forests most commonly as a result of lightning strikes and long-term droughts. The Amazon is no exception. In 1998, severe drought brought on by an El Niño episode burned 20,000 square kilometres of forest in the Roraima and southeastern Pará regions of the Amazon (Nepstad et al., 2001). It seems bad, but this is natural variability in fire occurrence, and is actually a critical component of the Earth system (Whitlock et al., 2010). Despite Amazon rainforests being more resilient to fires due to their natural microclimates only infrequently providing suitable conditions for fire ignition (Uhl and Kauffman, 1990; Baretto et al., 2006), anthropogenic deforestation has been seen to increase the susceptibility of forests to fire by providing greater ignition and fuel sources, altering the forest microclimate to observe longer periods with no rain, and decreasing the albedo of the land surface (Uhl and Kauffman, 1990; Nepstad et al., 2001; Silvestrini et al., 2011). The key word here: anthropogenic.

Anthropogenically-induced fires in the Amazon are common enough that Baretto et al. (2006) defined ‘fire zones’ in the Amazon as zones of a 10km radius around a forest fire, and determined that 28% of the Brazilian Amazon was under significant anthropogenic fire pressure. Fire itself is used to clear forested land for a number of uses, referred to as ‘slash and burn agriculture’, but is just one method amongst many, including forest clear-cutting and selective logging (Ferretti-Gallon and Busch, 2017).

A comprehensive study by Ferretti-Gallon and Busch (2017), based on 121 deforestation studies from 1996 to 2013, found that the anthropogenic deforestation I’ve been banging on about occurs almost exclusively due to the potential economic returns. It’s all about money (duh!). The Amazon offers a wealth of public ecosystem services, including biodiversity habitats, storm mitigation, and carbon storage (to name just a few). But it seems like if the private economic returns of croplands, pasture, mining, and urban development are greater than these ecosystem services, it’s goodbye Amazon and hello slash and burn, but most importantly, hello money! That’s essentially why deforestation levels I talked about in my previous post are above the optimum – it’s all about the money! Remember The Lorax?

Now I know I’ve spent all this time telling you that it’s alarming and problematic, but I’ve not really said why it’s a problem yet. If you’re reading this thinking ‘So what?’, stop that. Stop that right now! Quite frankly, it’s terrifying (okay, maybe I’m being a little sensationalist). Well, I’m sorry to stop short, but I’ll be addressing that in the next post. There’s a lot of reasons why it’s a problem, but next time I’ll be delving into the ecological happenings in the Amazon right now – notably, the decline in biodiversity. But before I sign off there’s one key thing I want you all to remember. Everything is connected! Those of you well-acquainted with social issues may have heard of the term ‘Intersectionality’. It exists in the natural world too! Environmental change is so so intersectional. And don’t you forget it!

Where have all the good trees gone?

Extent of Deforestation in the Amazon

Consider this gif:

Figure 1: A gif showing deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest (Source: Giphy, accessed 29/11/2017)

You might remember it from an earlier blog post. It shows how much of the Amazon Rainforest has been removed since the year 2000, i.e. the extent of deforestation in the Amazon. Without any political borders drawn on, I'm not precisely sure which parts of the Amazon are shown exactly. Thankfully, a number of scientists have conducted research precisely into this because of the potential threat such deforestation poses to ecosystem services provided by the Amazon; threats that subsequent posts will detail.

A very nice table of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon can be found here, based on estimates from the Brazilian National Institute of Space Research and the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation. It includes tree cover loss in Brazil beginning from the 1970s, which is particularly important considering that the Brazilian Amazon makes up 60% of the total rainforest. The amount of forest lost annually increased significantly in the 1970s and 1980s from pre-1970s levels, but has begun to slow since then. Although, there are peaks in 1995 and 2004, at which times annual deforestation rates were unsteady.

Rates of forest loss have slowly been declining since then. But remember, considering that full tree regrowth in the Brazilian Amazon is a process that occurs on the scale of hundreds of years (Houghton et al., 2000), deforestation since the 1970s has been largely cumulative. So even though rates of deforestation have been decreasing in the past decade, the total forest lost has continued to increase. Today, only 81% of the pre-1970 Brazilian Amazon forest cover has been retained, compared to 97.6% retained in the 1970s, relating to a 768,935 square kilometer and 98,400 square kilometer loss respectively since 1970. As you can tell, a staggering amount of the Brazilian Amazon has been lost.

As for elsewhere in the Amazon, it's all very concerning as well. To put this into perspective, a high-resolution study of global forest cover in the 21st century by Hansen et al. (2013) estimated that the rate of loss of forest land cover in the Amazon between 2000 and 2012 was, in the words of The Guardian, in the order of magnitude of 50 football pitches a minute, and with a total loss 10 times greater than the size of the UK. Equally concerning, although not directly related, Hansen et al. estimated that global forest loss was 2.3 million square kilometers in the same time period, with only 0.8 million square kilometers afforested. In comparison, the Amazon only had a third of what was deforested replaced.

In the true spirit of science, a number of figures have been created to represent this beautifully.

Figure 2: Tree cover loss across various countries containing parts of the Amazon Rainforest. (Source: Butler, 2017, updated)

Figure 2 from Butler (2017, updated), based on 2017 data from a group of researchers led by Matt Hansen (yes, the very same as the one referenced above!) at the University of Maryland, shows Amazonian forest loss in hectares per year across various regions between 2001 and 2015. Brazil is far and away the winner, or loser, depending on how you look at it. So much so that it's difficult to see the disparity between other countries. It's a good indication of the sheer amount of forest loss occurring in Brazil.

Figure 3: Tree cover loss across various countries containing parts of the Amazon Rainforest, without Brazil. (Source: Butler, 2017, updated)

Figure 3 depicts forest loss across regions without Brazil. It's easier to see the disparity between other countries here, with Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia seeing the greatest deforestation across the whole period. Encouragingly, deforestation in the Amazon seems to be declining across the most significant regions. Finally, some hope!

The disparity between Brazil and the other countries is clear, but don't be fooled by pretty graphs, dear reader(s)! This doesn't necessarily mean that the rate or proportion of loss in Brazil is greater than other nations. Remember, it's thought that Brazil contains about 60% of the Amazon Rainforest within its borders. It's entirely possible that Brazil's greater total forest loss is due to solely to its greater area, although it's difficult to tell without the data. Regardless, the sheer extent of deforestation occurring in the Amazon is alarming, and is clearly evident.

That's all for this post, folks, but I've got another one in the works, a Deforestation: Part 2, if you will. It should be up very soon so stay tuned!

Food for thought. Too much of it.

Just a short post this time for you all. I came across two articles in the Guardian that might be of interest to some of you, and are definitely relevant.

The first article, which you can find here, discusses that humans' meat-based diets and over-consumption of food is leading to a decline in forest extent, which disproportionately affects the Amazon Rainforest. I recommend having a read of the comments section too - a lot of people point to over population as opposed to simply individual over-consumption and meat-based diets. What do you think?

The second article, linked for you wonderful reader(s) here, is particularly alarming. Insect populations have declined beginning around the 1980s, and that trend isn't showing any signs of stopping. Fewer creepy crawlies? Sounds great, right? Not when you think about how ecologically important insects are, and how resilient they've been in the past. As the article suggests, it's a catastrophe!

Enjoy the reading and keep an eye out for my next post on deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest and the ecological impacts occurring as a result. It should be coming out next Friday (don't quote me on that)!

Deforestation and... children's books?

Remember The Lorax?

I originally planned to make this post about the effects of deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest, but during my research I remembered a great book - Dr. Suess' The Lorax. Published in 1971, a few of you may be familiar with its story. Some of you may have seen the 2012 feature film. I had always understood the book and why the Once-ler was its antagonist, but I only recently thought about how strikingly relevant it is to environmental issues. This post still follows the deforestation theme I promised, but I'll be saving the in-depth discussion for next time. For now, I'll talk about why this book's message is important. So, spoilers ahead!

Figure 1: The book cover for Dr. Seuss' 1971 children's book, The Lorax. Its message is strikingly relevant to current environmental issues, particularly deforestation.

For those of you unfamiliar, the book tells the story of the Lorax, who "speaks for the trees", and the Once-ler, who's out to make a profit. The trees in question are the 'Truffula trees' with "tufts softer than silk", which the Once-ler stumbles upon and decides to make clothing out of. While felling trees, the Lorax appears to warn the Once-ler to stop. The Once-ler doesn't heed the warning and continues his industrialisation of the Truffula forest. Eventually trees become sparse and the native animal species suffer the consequences. The Bar-ba-loots run out of Truffula fruits to eat, the Swomee-swans can't sing with smog in the air, and the Humming-Fish are forced out of their lake from the factory's pollution. The fall of the last-standing Truffula tree is heard, the Lorax flies away, and the Once-ler is left with a desolate, tree-less landscape before him.

The parallel this draws with the Amazon Rainforest is clear. Around 17% of forest in the Amazon has been lost in the last 50 years, due largely to conversion for cattle farming (WWF, 2017). Though lots of this is deforested to acquire valuables like mahogany, gold, and oil. A separate report published in September by the WWF (2017) claims that 381 new species were discovered between 2014 and 2015. The sheer abundance of species in the Amazon region showcases its almost unparalelled biodiversity. Under current forestry regimes, this diversity is seriously under threat. Deforestation and other disturbances in the Amazon can double loss of biodiversity (Barlow et al., 2016). Mercury has even been seen to pollute the Caqueta River in the Columbian Amazon (Olivero-Verbel et al., 2016). All of these real occurrences were addressed in The Lorax back in 1971, and they're still happening now. So, why is the book important?

Well, most people don't like scientific literature. I don't blame them. Ever read the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports? They're not fun. But the information is extremely important. While The Lorax and other books like it don't detail the science, the stories they tell make people aware of these very pressing environmental issues. I'd implore anyone who hasn't yet to give The Lorax a read. It's short, but the premise is thought-provoking. If you want to know about issues in the Amazon, stick around! You're in good hands... or at least we'll find out in January! For now, here's a thought-provoking picture, even if the wording is technically a little inaccurate. See you next time!

Figure 2: A thought-provoking, albeit technically inaccurate, quote. It's unknown who said this. 

Ent it about time we talked about the Amazon? An Introduction

Welcome to my blog - "Trouble in Paradise - Issues in the Amazon Rainforest". If you didn't get the title, google images of 'Ent', but know that I'm ashamed of you. My first post will be short. Just an introduction to me, my blog, and what I'll likely discuss. So, without further ado...

I'm Tom Crawley, an MSc Environmental Modelling student at UCL, having completed my undergraduate degree in BSc Geography at the University of Exeter. My interests within geography lie mostly in carbon cycling, biogeography, and vegetation dynamics, so now I'm blogging about them! The idea for this blog was partly inspired by Anthony Barnosky and Elizabeth Hadly's 2015 book, End Game: Tipping Point for Planet Earth? (Figure 1), which discusses the environmental issues humans are facing on a global scale. The book addresses everything from the physical science of global warming and biodiversity loss, to the social consequences of unsustainable population growth. I highly recommend you pick up and read it, even though I've not quite finished it myself.

Figure 1: The book cover for Barnosky and Hadly's End Game: Tipping Point for Planet Earth? (Source: Harper Collins, 2015)

Considering my geographical interests, I decided to take a look at what the issues that Barnosky and Hadly discuss are doing to one of the world's largest ecosystems. And so, I'm dedicating this blog to all things Amazonian. Well, not all things - if you're here for warrior women or quick-click shopping then I'm afraid you're in the wrong place. Up until early January, I'll be bringing to you, dear reader(s), a whole host of issues affecting the Amazon Rainforest. I'll aim to cover key issues like deforestation, biodiversity, and biogeochemical cycling. For the more technically-minded among you, I'll be going into the environmental science behind some of these issues as well as the expected consequences.

There'll be a mixture of critical reviews, news articles, and opinion pieces that I'll be discussing littered throughout this blog. I'm a newbie to blogging though, so bear with me while I work out the kinks, and get ready for a probably-not-very-exciting-but-still-kinda-cool-if-you're-into-it ride!

For now, here's a fun but ultimately terrifying gif (Figure 2) of what I'll be covering in the next post - Deforestation!

Figure 2: A gif showing deforestation of the Amazon between the years 2000 and 2008 (Source: Giphy, accessed 18/10/2017)