Last year, wildfires in Brazil devastated 16.3 million hectares, 14% more than the area destroyed in 2021, it was announced on Tuesday.
The Amazon is once again the hardest hit region, according to a study released on Tuesday by the Mapbiomas initiative.
The largest rainforest on the planet has lost 7.9 million hectares as almost half of the fires recorded last year in Brazil (49%) occurred in the biome.
The study notes that most fires in the biome occurred in August, September and October, but it was in December that the flames increased by 50% more than in 2021.
Of the 27 Brazilian states, Mato Grosso burned the most between January and December 2022, followed by Para and Tocantins, all in the Amazon region.
According to the study, the second biome to lose the most vegetation as a result of last year’s fires was Cerrado (Brazilian savanna) with an area of 7.4 million hectares (45% of the total area).
However, experts say that, covering an area almost half the size of the Amazon, it is the most affected in 2022.
The good news came from the Atlantic Forest and the Pantanal, where the least area has been burned in the last four years, with an 85% reduction compared to 2021 in the case of the Pantanal.
Author: Portuguese
Source: CM Jornal
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