Wildfires threaten unique Brazil ecosystem = Link goes to the BBC
Firefighters are battling wildfires in Brazil's Pantanal, the world's largest tropical wetland.
The Pantanal is home to jaguars, giant anteaters and giant river otters.
Close to 32,000 hectares have already been destroyed by the fires in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, local media report.
Climate experts say this year's wildfire season has started earlier and is more intense than in previous years.
But the Pantanal is a “fire-dependent ecosystem” you cry, or maybe, you don’t, there are however limitations to this fact,
Understanding Brazil’s catastrophic fires: Causes, consequences and policy needed to prevent future tragedies — Link goes to Science Direct the whole article is free to read/download, also in pdf.
Applying the classification of Hardesty et al. (2005) to the Brazilian biomes, the Cerrado, Pantanal and Pampa are fire-dependent; the rainforests of the Amazon basin and Atlantic Forest are fire-sensitive, and the Caatinga is fire-independent (Fig. 2). This type of classification of ecosystems in relation to fire sensitivity on the biogeographic region level is necessarily made based on the predominant vegetation type that defines the biome. However, all biomes contain vegetation types with different sensitivities to fire (see small patches of different colors within each biome in Fig. 2, and examples in Fig. 3). For example, embedded in fire-sensitive tropical Atlantic rainforests there are patches of flammable open shrubby grasslands (Fig. 3D), mainly in its southern part. Similarly, there are sporadic patches of savanna in the Amazon basin’s lowland rain forests (Fig. 3C). Likewise, patches of fire-sensitive vegetation can be found in fire-dependent biomes, such as the patches of semideciduous forest associated with more fertile soils and along water courses in the Cerrado, Pampa and Pantanal (Fig. 3B). Under natural conditions (without human interference), mosaics of fire-dependent and fire-sensitive ecosystems would likely be rather stable and driven by climatic fluctuations over long periods of time (e.g., Müller et al., 2013).
Fire-dependent ecosystems
In Brazil, fire-dependent ecosystems are formed by grasslands and savannas of the Cerrado, Pampa and Pantanal. Grasslands are also within the Atlantic Forest – often associated with specific topographic and edaphic conditions (Vasconcelos, 2011) – as well as in its southernmost part (Fig. 2; Overbeck et al., 2007). About 5% of the Amazon biome comprises patches of savanna and campinarana, defined by edaphic conditions and influenced by fire (Adeney et al., 2016; Flores and Holmgren, 2021). Fires in these savannas and grasslands are typically surface fires (Box 1): they pass rapidly, affecting mostly the ground layer, are usually of low intensity (mild) and return relatively frequently (3–6 years, according to Ramos-Neto and Pivello, 2000 and Pereira-Junior et al., 2014) (Fig. 5K to P). In the seasonally dry climate of the Cerrado and Pantanal, natural fires usually occur in the transitional months between seasons (more often at the beginning or occasionally at end of wet season), caused by lightning strikes that ignite the accumulated dry vegetation mass. Under these conditions, fire usually does not spread over large areas because it is extinguished by the coming rain (Ramos-Neto and Pivello, 2000; Medeiros and Fiedler, 2004).
*The keywords are frequency and intensity.
Again: From the BBC article
The number of fires so far in 2024 is the highest since 2020, which was the worst year on record in terms of Pantanal fires.
In that year, about 30% of the Pantanal was consumed by fire.
The difference in the number of fire outbreaks so far this year compared to last year is already staggering.
Between 1 January and 9 June 2023, 127 fires had been reported. In the same period this year, that number was 1,315.
Vinicius Silgueiro from local NGO Instituto Centro da Vida told Reuters news agency that "what is most worrying is that even in the rainy season, we had this increase in fires".
Why should this bother me?
The Pantanal: Saving the world’s largest tropical wetland — Link to the WWF
While not as globally familiar as the Amazon to the north, the Pantanal is one of the most biologically rich environments on the planet with more than 4,700 plant and animal species. In fact, the Pantanal contains South America's highest concentration of some wildlife species, including the jaguar and caiman.
Currently, the Pantanal remains relatively intact. However, a growing number of environmental pressures, ranging from unsustainable infrastructure development to untreated waste pollution, threaten to destabilize the regional ecosystem and the benefits it provides people and wildlife. Deforestation in the Pantanal is increasing, with more than 12% of the forest cover already lost. At the current rate, the Pantanal’s native vegetation will disappear by 2050 if no measures are taken to combat this trend.
Inadequate planning of development by any of the three countries has the potential to negatively impact not only the region's lucrative economy and the well-being of its inhabitants, but also the stability of the world’s fifth-largest basin, the Rio de la Plata, where the Pantanal is located.
The main disadvantage of being a unique ecosystem is the fact that it is unique, once it is lost it is gone forever.
I’ll leave this diary with another link:
Leaving the Anthropocene: Ecosystems Restoration & Planetary Regeneration in the Ecozoic -link goes to Medium.com
The bulk of the damage was done by a relatively small part of humanity— at best a wealthy 20 percent (and yes I am aware of my privilege and responsability of being part of them). The data and historical evidence clearly indicates that much of global warming can be traced to a few (mainly) colonialising countries and only 100 international corporations who became as powerful as national economies by externalising socio-ecological costs of their operation, while lobbying governments to create regulations that privatised wins and socialised cost.
A morning muse
~A
