Aragão and Shimabukuro (Reports, 4 June 2010, p. 1275) reported that fires increase in agricultural frontiers even as deforestation decreases and concluded that these fires lead to unaccounted carbon emissions under the United Nations climate treaty’s tropical deforestation and forest degradation component. Emissions from post-deforestation management activities are, in fact, included in these estimates—but burning of standing forests is not.
Negative fire feedback in a transitional forest of southeastern Amazonia
Negative fire feedback in a transitional forest of southeastern Amazonia
Anthropogenic understory fires affect large areas of tropical forest, particularly during severe droughts. Yet, the mechanisms that control tropical forests' susceptibility to fire remain ambiguous. We tested the widely accepted hypothesis that Amazon forest fires...