Deforestation and forest degradation associated with agricultural expansion lead to higher temperatures and dried out vegetation, creating additional fuel and allowing fires to spread more quickly. Though fires are responsible for less than 10% of all tree cover loss in the tropics, more common drivers like commodity-driven deforestation and shifting agriculture make tropical forests less resilient and more susceptible to fires. Over the last 20 years, fire-related tree cover loss in the tropics increased at a rate of about 36,000 hectares (around 5%) per year and accounted for roughly 15% of the total global increase in tree cover loss from fires between 20. Yet fires are increasing in this region as well. In contrast to boreal forests, stand-replacing fires are not a usual part of the ecological cycle in tropical forests. Agricultural Expansion and Forest Degradation Are Stoking Fires in Tropical Forests Learn more about the data on Global Forest Watch. The new data provides a long-term view of these types of fires over the last 20 years at a higher resolution than ever before, and helps researchers distinguish the impact of tree cover loss from fires and loss from other drivers like agriculture and forestry. Loss from these types of fires is not always permanent but stand-replacing fires can cause long-term changes to forest structure and soil chemistry, and differ from lower intensity understory fires that provide ecological benefits for many forests. Researchers at the University of Maryland used Landsat satellite imagery to map the area of tree cover lost to stand-replacing forest fires (fires that kill all or most of the living overstory in a forest) annually from 2001 to 2022. How Do We Measure Tree Cover Loss from Fires?
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