Thread by @weatherindia

Brazil’s #AmazonForests are burning at an unprecedented rate this year.

weather.com/en-IN/india/en…

(📸: NASA Worldview, Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS))

➡️n 2020 itself, about 516 major forest fires have been detected across 9,12,863 acres of land between May 28 and August 25—the burnt land roughly equivalent to about 6.5 times the area of Mumbai city.

➡️According to the Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP) satellite data analysis, nearly half of these forest fires...

...have occurred in just the past two weeks of August 2020, while the first ten days of August reported about 10,136 blazes (total small and big fires) across the forest.

➡️Further, as per Mongabay, of the total forest fires detected this year, 83% were reported from deforested areas, while over 12% were in intact forests that cover a total area of 1,73,000 acres.

➡️One of the largest forest fire incidents was reported on August 17, which burned nearly 25,605 acres of land—which amounts to about 14,500 football fields. The blaze was detected near the Xingu River in the Amazon state of Pará in Northern Brazil.

In order to control the forest fires, the Brazilian government, back in July 2020, banned any fire activity for 120 days in the Amazon and Pantanal regions. But even this ban was unable to prevent or control the raging fires in the precious ecosystem.

#AmazonFires

➡️As per Brazil’s Space Research Institute, the deforestation activity from August 2019 to July 2020 increased by nearly 34%, while the number of fires from July 2019 to July 2020 rose by 28%.

#AmazonFires

Even last year, a record 80,000 fires were reported across Brazil by August, a 77% year-to-year increase for the same tracking period.

#AmazonFires

➡️The fires usually occur during the dry season in Brazil but are also largely linked to illegal practices wherein people clear lands for cattle grazing or burn-off felled trees after illegally acquiring valuable wood.

#AmazonFires

➡️Considering recent instances, it remains to be seen just how long it lasts to be one of the most productive terrestrial ecosystems of the planet.