Amazon deforestation exceeds 87 million hectares over four decades
Environmentalists have been warning about the deforestation of the Amazon for many years. The area of the rainforest, also called the "lungs of the Earth," is regularly subjected to deforestation. Researchers estimate that over 40 years, trees have been cut down from an area.
24 September 2024 15:33
The Amazon is a paradise for wild animals, with 5.4 million square kilometres of rainforest that produce 6 to 9 percent of the world's oxygen and a place where exotic plants grow. The rainforest territory encompasses parts of Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, French Guiana, and Suriname. Environmentalists and activists have fought to preserve the Amazon jungle for decades, arguing for protecting plants and animals. Despite this, company owners, factory owners, and farmers do everything they can to deforest the area and acquire land on which they can make a profit.
Researchers examined the scale of Amazon deforestation
Researchers from the RAISG group (Amazon Georeferenced Socio-Environmental Information Network) decided to investigate the scale of Amazon deforestation. Scientists have long been aware of the problem, as they have often mentioned during the publication of various studies. Researchers from the Amazon Georeferenced Socio-Environmental Information Network attempted to estimate the size of the deforested area over the past 40 years. To this end, they compared satellite images showing the Amazon.
Researchers are sounding the alarm
According to researchers, from 1985 to 2023, vegetation has been destroyed on 87 million hectares due to deforestation, or 12.5 percent of the surface of the world's largest rainforest, the Amazon. In the study's description, scientists wrote: "Numerous ecosystems have disappeared to make way for vast pastures, soy fields or other monocultures, or they have been transformed into craters for gold mining."
The scientists add, "The loss of the forest releases more carbon into the atmosphere, disrupting an entire ecosystem that regulates the climate and the water cycle, which has a clear impact on temperatures."
Sandra Rio Caceres from Peru's Common Good Institute said in an interview with AFP: "With the loss of the forest, we emit more carbon into the atmosphere and this disrupts an entire ecosystem that regulates the climate and the hydrological cycle, clearly affecting temperatures." The researcher added that, in her opinion, the destruction of Amazonian vegetation is partly due to droughts and fires that wreak havoc in South America.
