Amazon rainforest is the world’s largest rainforest, spanning more than 2 million square miles in northern South America, mainly in Brazil but also in parts of Peru, Colombia and six other nations. It’s called a rainforest because of its rainy conditions.
Why is the Amazon rainforest important?
The Amazon rainforest stores a huge amount of carbon in its vegetation and soil. If the burning of vegetation released all that carbon into the atmosphere, efforts to limit climate change by cutting down on carbon dioxide emissions from motor vehicles and industrial processes would become pointless, says Yadvinder Malhi, an ecologist at the University of Oxford in England. “Any chance of doing that would be blown out of the water.”
WHY SHOULD YOU CARE?
Amazon is BEAUTIFUL! And is teeming with LIFE; home to more plants and animals than any other place on earth. Lots of people live there too! 400-500 Indigenous tribes inhabit the Amazon. Their traditional and cultural beliefs have existed for centuries, providing lots of knowledge about the Amazonian forests. Then there are the trees! Did you know that there are 4 times more TREES in the Amazon than stars in the MILKY WAY? The great amassing of trees make their own rainfall, releasing approximately 20 billion TONS of moisture into the atmosphere daily, seeding the rain clouds that travel the earth. The rivers also carry ONE-FIFTH of the planet’s freshwater to the sea.
Scientists are working to discern how many of the fires are burning on the border of deforested land that had been previously cleared to make way for cattle grazing or growing crops, especially soybeans.
The number of fires identified by satellite images in the Amazon so far this month is the highest since 2010, according to Brazil’s National Institute of Space Research agency, which tracks deforestation and forest fires using satellite images.
The hashtag #PrayForAmazonas was the top trending topic in the world on Twitter on Wednesday, as images of a rain forest on fire spread across the internet. Here’s what we know so far about the fires raging in the Amazon.