The Horrifying Science of the Deforestation Fueling Amazon Fires

Being a rainforest, the Amazon isn’t supposed to burn out of control, unlike California’s drier landscape, which is built to burn and burn explosively. Yet here we are, watching swaths of the Amazon go up in flames. And we can easily nail down the cause: humans. Deforestation is what’s driving these blazes, and there is some horrifying science behind that.

Deforestation is at the core of Brazil's out-of-control fires in the Amazon. 

Since the 1970s, 20 percent of the Amazon has been deforested, totaling about twice the area of California. But deforestation isn’t an organized shrinking of the rainforest, paring it down from the edges in. Humans carve out farmlands, sometimes leaving a neat edge where the forest meets the fields, or even creating islands of forest surrounded by crops or grazing fields for cattle. Indeed, agriculture is far and away the primary driver of deforestation in Brazil.

You might think that well, things could be worse, at least these can operate like actual islands—self-contained spots of green in a sea of agriculture. And you wouldn't be alone.

Read the Wired story by Matt Simon - “The Horrifying Science of the Deforestation Fueling Amazon Fires.”