Satellite Based Study on Amazon Rain Forest Fires and Effect on Climate

Chakraborty, Madhura; Dey, G. K.; Gupta, Rohit Kumar Prasad

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3503779

Cited by 2 publications

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“…Some of these regions have recently experienced unprecedented severe wildfires (e.g. Amazon: Chakraborty et al, 2019) and are likely to experience even more severe events in the future (Silveira et al, 2022). Rain forest obligate amphibians with terrestrial reproductive modes should be prioritized in conservation assessments of tropical regions where drought and wildfire events are predicted to increase in severity.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Such changes are expected to have increasingly negative consequences for entire ecological communities, including those both with and without a long history of fire exposure (Nolan et al, 2020). Recent wildfire events in Africa, Greece, California and Australia (Nolan et al, 2020), as well as across the Amazon (Chakraborty et al, 2019), already demonstrate such consequences. Understanding the impacts of climate‐driven wildfires on species across ecological communities is critical to predicting their viability and identifying opportunities for adaptive management to improve their resilience (Folke et al, 2004).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Severe wildfires promoted by climate change negatively impact forest amphibian metacommunities

Beranek

Hamer

Mahony

et al. 2023

Diversity and Distributions

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Aim: Changes to the extent and severity of wildfires driven by anthropogenic climate change are predicted to have compounding negative consequences for ecological communities. While there is evidence that severe weather events like drought impact amphibian communities, the effects of wildfire on such communities are not well understood. The impact of wildfire on amphibian communities and species is likely to vary, owing to the diversity of their life-history traits. However, no previous research has identified commonalities among the amphibians at most risk from wildfire, limiting conservation initiatives in the aftermath of severe wildfire. We aimed to investigate the impacts of the unprecedented 2019-2020 black summer bushfires on Australian forest amphibian communities.Location: Eastern coast of New South Wales, Australia. Methods:We conducted visual encounter surveys and passive acoustic monitoring across 411 sites within two regions, one in northeast and one in southeast New South Wales. We used fire severity and extent mapping in two multispecies occupancy models to assess the impacts of fire on 35 forest amphibian species. Results:We demonstrate a negative influence of severe fire extent on metacommunity occupancy and species richness in the south with weaker effects in the northreflective of the less severe fires that occurred in this region. Both threatened and common species were impacted by severe wildfire extent. Occupancy of burrowing species and rain forest specialists had mostly negative relationships with severe wildfire extent, while arboreal amphibians had neutral relationships. Main Conclusion:Metacommunity monitoring and adaptive conservation strategies are needed to account for common species after severe climatic events. Ecological, morphological and life-history variation drives the susceptibility of amphibians to wildfires. We document the first evidence of climate change-driven wildfires impacting temperate forest amphibian communities across a broad geographic area, which

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Severe wildfires promoted by climate change negatively impact forest amphibian metacommunities

Beranek

Hamer

Mahony

et al. 2023

Diversity and Distributions

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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Severe Biomass-Burning Aerosol Pollution during the 2019 Amazon Wildfire and Its Direct Radiative-Forcing Impact: A Space Perspective from MODIS Retrievals

et al. 2022

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An extreme biomass burning event occurred in the Amazonian rainforest from July through September 2019 due to the extensive wildfires used to clear the land, which allowed for more significant forest burning than previously occurred. In this study, we reclustered the clear-sky ambient aerosols to adapt the black carbon (BC) aerosol retrieval algorithm to Amazonia. This not only isolated the volumetric fraction of BC (fbc) from moderate-resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) aerosol data, but also facilitated the use of aerosol mixing and scattering models to estimate the absorption properties of smoke plumes. The retrieved MODIS aerosol dataset provided a space perspective on characterizing the aerosol changes and trends of the 2019 pollution event. A very high aerosol optical depth (AOD) was found to affect the source areas continuously, with higher and thus stronger aerosol absorption. These pollutants also affected the atmosphere downwind due to the transport of air masses. In addition, properties of aerosols emitted from the 2019 Amazonian wildfire events visualized a significant year-to-year enhancement, with the averaged AOD at 550 nm increased by 150%. A 200% increase in the aerosol-absorption optical depth (AAOD) at 550 nm was recognized due to the low single-scattering albedo (SSA) caused by the explosive BC emissions during the pollution peak. Further simulations of aerosol radiative forcing (ARF) showed that the biomass-burning aerosols emitted during the extreme Amazonian wildfires event in 2019 forced a significant change in the radiative balance, which not only produced greater heating of the atmospheric column through strong absorption of BC, but also reduced the radiation reaching the top-of-atmosphere (TOA) and surface level. The negative radiative forcing at the TOA and surface level, as well as the positive radiative forcing in the atmosphere, were elevated by ~30% across the whole of South America compared to 2018. These radiative effects of the absorbing aerosol could have the ability to accelerate the deterioration cycle of drought and fire over the Amazonian rainforest.

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Satellite Based Study on Amazon Rain Forest Fires and Effect on Climate

Cited by 2 publications

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Severe wildfires promoted by climate change negatively impact forest amphibian metacommunities

Severe wildfires promoted by climate change negatively impact forest amphibian metacommunities

Severe Biomass-Burning Aerosol Pollution during the 2019 Amazon Wildfire and Its Direct Radiative-Forcing Impact: A Space Perspective from MODIS Retrievals

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