Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest rose 10.7 percent last month compared to June 2019, the 14th consecutive month of worsening tree loss, according to new data from the country’s national space research agency, INPE.
Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest rose 10.7 percent last month compared to June 2019, the 14th consecutive month of worsening tree loss, according to new data from the country’s national space research agency, INPE. In the first half of 2020, deforestation was up 25 percent, for a total 1,184 square miles, compared to the same period last year.
If the trends continue, 2020 is on track to be the country’s worst year for deforestation in more than a decade, with an estimated loss of more than 5,791 square miles of forest — an area larger than the state of Connecticut, Ane Alencar, science director at Brazil’s Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM), told Reuters.
Scientists at IPAM and the Woods Hole Research Center estimated that deforestation and fires in Brazil’s Amazon over the past six months have released 115 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the equivalent of the annual emissions of 25 million cars and a 20 percent increase over the same period last year.
Read more at Yale Environment 360
Image by Robert Balog from Pixabay
