Fires in areas of native vegetation in the Amazon that have not been affected by deforestation and that are known as ‘mature forests’ increased by 152% last year, compared to 2022, scientific sources reported yesterday.
‘Mature forests’ contain the oldest native trees in the biome, which have a greater carbon storage potential than younger ones and thus help curb the impacts of the climate crisis.
According to the study released by the Research Support Foundation in the State of Sao Paulo (FAPESP) and published in the journal Global Change Biology, burning in these forest areas increased despite the 16% drop in the total number of fires in the biome in 2023 and 20% in deforestation. Researchers detected that fires in those forest areas increased from 13,477 in 2022 to 34,012 last year, after analyzing satellite images.
According to experts, the main causes of the problem were the droughts in the Amazon and the degradation caused in the biome by the fires that occurred during the severe droughts of 2010 and those recorded in the period from 2015 to 2016.
The total number of fires in the Brazilian Amazon in the first quarter of 2024 was the highest in the last eight years, with 7,861 outbreaks, representing more than 50% of all notifications in the country.