Wildfires have seemingly been on the rise. We hear about uncontrolled fires blowing up all the time recently, have been for the last 3-5 years or so. Some of the greatest examples that come to me off the top of my head are the Amazon rainforest fire, Australia's massive fire, California's frequent fires, and so on and so forth.
The Amazon Rainforest fire was perhaps one of the most etched in my memory. Twitter and other social media was especially active. There was a lot of discussion about the animals living in the forests. It covers a huge area and it is home to a large population of biodiversity. It's essential to our lives and it's responsible for a large of our oxygen.
The Amazon rainforest covers approximately eight million square kilometres — an area larger than Australia — and is home to an astounding amount of biodiversity. It helps balance the global carbon budget by absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and plays a key role in the global water cycle, stabilizing global climate and rainfall. A nine nation network of Indigenous territories and natural areas have protected a massive amount of biodiversity and primary forest.
Yet these lands are under siege. As of 2019, an estimated 17 per cent of the Amazon’s forest cover has been clear-cut or burned since the 1970s, when regular measurements began and the Amazon was closer to intact.
As the rainforest bleeds biomass through deforestation, it loses its ability to capture carbon from the atmosphere and releases carbon through combustion. If the annual fires burning the Amazon are not curtailed, one of the world’s largest carbon sinks will progressively devolve into a carbon faucet, releasing more carbon dioxide than it sequesters.
While the global impacts are dire, the local impacts of these fires are also significant. Persistent poor air quality, which extends far into Brazil and other regions of South America, including in metropolitan centres like São Paulo, can lead to health problems.Excerpt from an article named 'Historic Amazon rainforest fires threaten climate and raise risk of new diseases' by the Conversation.
Fires do not occur naturally in the Amazon rainforest. Specific conditions are necessary for fires to burn in a standing forest, namely a dry year alongside lots of ignition sources on neighboring lands. These sources, almost exclusively caused by humans, can arise from runaway agricultural fires, or from blazes set intentionally to clear land following deforestation, much of it illegal.
Excerpt from an article named 'The Brazilian Amazon is burning, again' by Mongabay News
A lot of wildfires are also caused because trees dry out with time, and they die. Once that happens they become hollow trees. These can easily catch fire as the atmosphere around them gets drier. Even worse, if a tree is set on fire by accident, these burn like kindling.
CO2 emission in the atmosphere also makes wildfires worse, and wildfires increase CO2 emission in the air, this then becomes a vicious cycle that only makes things worse.
Pacific Gas and Electric Company were recently fined millions in damage as a settlement because of their faulty wiring and infrastructure which sparked fires.
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