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kp777 · 28 days

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By Olivia Rosane

Common Dreams

April 4, 2024

"Steep declines in the Brazilian Amazon and Colombia show that progress is possible, but increasing forest loss in other areas has largely counteracted that progress," one expert said.

An annual accounting of global deforestation, released Thursday, shows that political will can make a significant difference when it comes to protecting vital ecosystems and the Indigenous and local communities that depend on them—but that policymakers in many regions are not taking enough action to save tropical forests.

The data, gathered by the University of Maryland's Global Land Analysis and Discover Lab and published on the World Resources Institute's (WRI) Global Forest Watch program, found that primary tropical forest loss in 2023 decreased by more than one-third in Brazil and nearly 50% in Colombia after both countries elected leaders who championed conservation policies. However, on the global level, these declines were offset by increased deforestation in other countries.

"The world took two steps forward, two steps back when it comes to this past year's forest loss," Global Forest Watch director Mikaela Weisse said in a statement. "Steep declines in the Brazilian Amazon and Colombia show that progress is possible, but increasing forest loss in other areas has largely counteracted that progress. We must learn from the countries that are successfully slowing deforestation."

"This year's forest loss numbers tell an inspiring story of what we can achieve when leaders prioritize action, but the data also highlights many urgent areas of missed opportunity to protect our forests and our future."

All told, 3.7 million hectares of primary tropical forests were felled last year at a rate equivalent to 10 soccer fields per minute. While tropical deforestation decreased by 9% in 2023 compared with 2022, the overall deforestation rate has held steady when compared to 2019 and 2021. Tree clearing released 2.4 metric gigatons of climate pollution into the atmosphere, which is nearly half of the U.S.'s yearly emissions from burning fossil fuels.

"Forests are critical ecosystems for fighting climate change, supporting livelihoods, and protecting biodiversity," WRI President and CEO Ani Dasgupta said in a statement.

Global Forest Watch focuses on the tropics because more than 96% of human-caused deforestation occurs there. However, the climate crisis contributed to making 2023 a devastating year for global tree loss, which rose 24% due to record-breaking wildfires in Canada's boreal forests.

"That is one of the biggest anomalies on record," University of Maryland researcher Matt Hansen toldReuters, adding, "It's a big deal, and it's a cautionary tale for climate impacts to fire."

In the tropics, Brazil managed to cut primary deforestation by 36%, the lowest level in the country since 2015. The country moved from being responsible for 43% of tropical deforestation in 2022 to 30% in 2023.

The decline coincided with the election of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who replaced former right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro oversaw record deforestation as he prioritized exploitative industries over forest protections and Indigenous rights. Since taking office in early 2023, Lula has reversed course by promising to end deforestation by 2030, ramping up enforcement efforts against illegal forest clearing, rolling back anti-environmental measures, and recognizing new Indigenous territories.

"We're incredibly proud to see such stark progress being made across the country, especially in the Brazilian Amazon," Mariana Oliveira, who manages the Forests, Land Use, and Agriculture Program for WRI Brazil, said in a statement.

In Brazil, Amazon forest loss decreased by 39%, though deforestation increased in the vulnerable and vital Cerrado and Pantanal ecosystems.

"We still have a very long ways to improve and sustain the efforts, and I hope today's release energizes the national and subnational governments in Brazil—and governments around the world—to build on this momentum rather than using it as an excuse to slow down," Oliveira said.

The other 2023 success story was Colombia, which curbed primary forest loss by 49%. This reversal followed the election of left-wing President Gustavo Petro Urrego, who took office in August 2022 with Vice President Francia Márquez, a Goldman Environmental Prize winner. After a 2016 peace agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, other armed groups and other opportunists moved into territories they had vacated, increasing forest loss. Petro has prioritized conservation in negotiating peace agreements with these other armed groups.

"The story of deforestation in Colombia is complex and deeply intertwined with the country's politics, which makes 2023's historic decrease particularly powerful," WRI Colombia natural resources manager Alejandra Laina said in a statement. "There is no doubt that recent government action and the commitment of the communities has had a profound impact on Colombia's forests, and we encourage those involved in current peace talks to use this data as a springboard to accelerate further progress."

Despite the good news out of Brazil and Colombia, upticks in deforestation in Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Laos counteracted that progress on the global level. In Bolivia, forest loss rose by 27% to reach the greatest loss on record for a third consecutive year. A little over half of this was due to fires that spread more readily because of climate-fueled drought, while the rest was due to the expansion of agriculture, particularly soy. Agriculture was the main force behind deforestation in Nicaragua—which cleared 4.2% of its remaining primary forest—and Laos, which saw record loss of 47%.

Deforestation rates also continued to creep upward in Congo at 3% in 2023. This is concerning because the Congo rainforest is the last tropical forest that reliably acts as a carbon sink, and because of its importance to local communities.

"Forests are the backbone of livelihoods for Indigenous people and local communities across Africa, and this is especially true in the Congo Basin," Teodyl Nkuintchua, the Congo Basin strategy and engagement lead at WRI, said in a statement. "Dramatic policy action must be taken in the Congo Basin to enact new development pathways that support a transition away from unsustainable food and energy production practices, while improving well-being for Indigenous people and local communities as much as revenues for countries."

The new data comes as world leaders have six years to meet their promise, made at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow in 2021, of ending deforestation by 2030. However, WRI found that nearly 2 million more hectares were cleared in 2023 than would be consistent with meeting that goal, Mongabayreported.

WRI global forest director Rod Taylor told reporters that the world was "far off track and trending in the wrong direction when it comes to reducing global deforestation."

WRI's Dasgupta said: "The world has just six years left to keep its promise to halt deforestation. This year's forest loss numbers tell an inspiring story of what we can achieve when leaders prioritize action, but the data also highlights many urgent areas of missed opportunity to protect our forests and our future."

Taylor added that the rest of the world could not rely on individual leaders like Lula or Petro, but should take steps to encourage deforestation such as making it more profitable to preserve forests than to clear them, making sure global supply chains are deforestation free, and protecting the land rights of Indigenous peoples.

"Bold global mechanisms and unique local initiatives together are both needed to achieve enduring reductions in deforestation across all tropical front countries," Taylor said.

#colombia #gustavo petro #brazil #luiz inacio lula da silva #deforestation #agriculture #climate emergency

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sciencespies · 1 year

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Indigenous territories and protected areas are key to forest conservation in the Brazilian Amazon, study shows

https://sciencespies.com/nature/indigenous-territories-and-protected-areas-are-key-to-forest-conservation-in-the-brazilian-amazon-study-shows/

Indigenous territories and protected areas are key to forest conservation in the Brazilian Amazon, study shows

A research study led by researchers with the Center for Earth Observation and Modeling at the University of Oklahoma analyzed time series satellite images from 2000 to 2021, revealing the vital role of Indigenous territories and protected areas in forest conservation in the Brazilian Amazon. The study results, recently published in Nature Sustainability, called attention to the negative impacts of weakened governmental conservation policies in recent years.

The Brazilian Amazon encompasses the largest tropical forest area with the highest biodiversity in the world. Since 2000, Indigenous territories and protected areas have increased substantially in the region and by 2013, Indigenous territories and protected areas accounted for 43% of the total land area and covered approximately 50% of the total forest area.

However, tensions between forest conservation and socioeconomic development goals persist. In recent years, forest conservation has been threatened by large socio-ecological changes in Brazil. Weakened forest and environmental policies and enforcement as well as impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic had devastating impacts on Indigenous groups in the region.

In this U.S.-Brazil collaborative study, Yuanwei Qin, Ph.D., and Xiangming Xiao, Ph.D., of OU’s Center for Earth Observation and Modeling, with Fabio de Sa e Silva, Ph.D., assistant professor of international studies and Wick Cary Professor of Brazilian Studies in the OU College of International Studies, worked with collaborators from the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research and the National Institute for Research in Amazonia in Brazil. The research team combined multiple data sources to document and quantify the dynamics and impact of forest loss in the Brazilian Amazon over the past two decades.

Because of frequent cloud cover and fire-induced smoke in the Brazilian Amazon, annual forest maps from analyses of optical images have only moderate accuracy. In a 2019 paper published by the same journal, the research team combined image data from both optical and microwave sensors to generate annual Brazilian Amazon forest maps. Using these annual forest maps, they assessed the effects of Indigenous territories and protected areas on deforestation dynamics in the Brazilian Amazon through 2021.

“Between 2000 and 2021, the areas designated as Indigenous territories or protected areas increased to cover approximately 52% of forests in the Brazilian Amazon, accounting for only 5% of net forest loss and 12% of gross forest loss in the period,” said Qin. “This finding highlights the vital role of Indigenous territories and the protected areas for forest conservation in the region.”

The protected areas in the Brazilian Amazon are subject to different state and national governance arrangements and have different management objectives, including strict protection or sustainable use. They found that from 2003 through 2021, gross forest loss fell 48% in the protected areas subject to strict protection and 11% in the protected areas subject to sustainable use.

“These varying effects on forest conservation call for more in-depth causal analyses by researchers and invite stakeholders, decision-makers, and the public to reassess existing policies for these areas. Legal designations are important, but if the law is not enforced, the intended protection of forests and biodiversity will be illusional. This is an area in which Brazil is knowingly failing,” de Sa e Silva said.

The results from this study also show that annual forest area loss was affected by Brazilian forest policies, as evidenced by a large reduction of forest area loss in the early 2000s to mid-2010s, corresponding with Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva administration in 2003-2010, and renewed rise of forest area loss even among Indigenous territories and the protected areas in 2019-2021, corresponding with President Jair Bolsonaro’s administration in 2019-2022.

“How to rebuild effective policies and reduce forest area loss in the Brazilian Amazon in the coming years will be one of the grand challenges for Lula’s administration and international communities,” Xiao said.

This study adds to a portfolio of research efforts to document forest areas in the Brazilian Amazon by Qin and Xiao, including a 2019 paper, “Improved estimates of forest cover and loss in the Brazilian Amazon in 2000-2017,” published in Nature Sustainability; a 2021 paper, “Carbon loss from forest degradation exceeds that from deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon,” published in Nature Climate Change; as well as two others.

Story Source:

Materials provided by University of Oklahoma. Original written by Chelsea Julian. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

#Nature

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notwiselybuttoowell · 2 years

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“It’s astonishing, isn’t it?” Lira said as the aircraft banked left over a 2,000-hectare sweep of rainforest near the town of Trairão that had been obliterated since June.

“What amazes me is the number of [destroyed] areas of this size – I’ve never seen it before,” Lira added during a 1,000-mile surveillance flight organised by the advocacy group ClimaInfo.

Activists like Lira suspect that the prospect of Jair Bolsonaro’s defeat in October’s presidential election has sparked a last-minute race to raze the jungle, with an unholy trinity of illegal loggers, cattle ranchers and gold miners intensifying their activities before his successor takes office.

“They’ve realised it’s their last opportunity to deforest without having to pay the price,” Lira lamented as he surveyed the desolation below as the number of Amazon fires hit a 12-year high.

“The way they see it, this is the last-chance saloon. Either they do it now, or they do it now.”

South-west of Trairão, the plane crossed the Tapajós River and entered the airspace over the Munduruku Indigenous territory, whose remote jungles have been ravaged by a gold mining frenzy that has poisoned rivers and soils with mercury.

“In the last two months I’ve identified more than 30 new mining areas,” Lira said as the plane navigated between purple dots he had used to mark the recently opened pits on his laptop screen. “There must be many more.”

Activists across the Amazon – a colossal region covering more than 60% of Brazil’s territory – say they fear a similar escalation as the clock runs down on Bolsonaro’s far-right administration.

A chunk of the Amazon larger than Taiwan has already been torn down since Bolsonaro took office in January 2019, with an area nearly twice the size of Tokyo destroyed in the first half of this year.

“This year end is a really worrying period,” said Carlos Travassos, an Indigenous expert who works with a team of rainforest defenders called the Forest Guardians in the Amazon state of Maranhão.

“It’s going to be the final year of this government – or we hope so at least. So there’s this feeling among illegal loggers and those who invade Indigenous lands that they need to try and extract whatever they can. They think that once there’s a change of government the comfort they have enjoyed will come to an end. The impunity they have benefited from will no longer exist.”

The prospect of political change has offered a glimmer of hope to embattled Amazon activists who watched in horror as Bolsonaro slashed funding to environmental and Indigenous protection agencies such as Ibama and Funai and filled them with unqualified stooges. Last week there were calls for Funai’s pro-Bolsonaro president to be sacked after he was recorded offering support to a jailed official who is alleged to have illegally rented Indigenous lands to cattle ranchers.

The frontrunner to beat Bolsonaro, the former leftist president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has vowed to fight deforestation and rebuild those institutions if elected. “We will put a complete end to any kind of illegal mining,” Lula, who governed for two terms from 2003 to 2010, vowed recently, promising to make the climate emergency an absolute priority.

#bolsonaro government #jair bolsonaro #amazon rainforest #indigenous rights #illegal logging #illegal mining #animal agriculture #ranching #brazil #brasil #luiz inácio lula da silva #environment

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citizensclub · 2 years

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"We don't have the power to stop our extinction" says Paola Antonelli curator of MoMA museum in New York

Humans will inevitably become extinct due to environmental breakdown, but we have the power to design ourselves a "beautiful ending". Paola Antonelli opened a major exhibition in Milan called "Broken Nature" that showed the Earth without humans.

NATURE IS GIVING US SIGNALS THAT WE CANNOT IGNORE MUCH LONGER

1-AGRICULTURE

According to "All Good Market" magazine in UK, we only have 60 harvests left as of 2014. Globally, we're destroying top soil at a rate of 1-3cm each year. In UK, we've lost 84% of our fertile top soil since 1850.

Humans have farmed for the past 12,000 years and we may now only have half a century left of this way of life

2-FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRIES

Fossil fuel powerful lobbys seem to be controlling the fight against climate change as no real progress has been accomplished since the first UN summit in Berlin in 1995. As of today, only Norway, the biggest oil producer in this part of Europe, has implemented some measures to curb global warming.

During the COP 26 in Glasgow Scotland, 503 fossil fuel lobbyists participated at the summit at the invitation of 27 countries including Canada, Brazil and Russia. It is obvious that these guys were not there to help and find solutions to the present climate crisis.

The oil industry is the most lucrative business on the planet and we subsidize them with $billions each year without asking anything in return. In 2019, the whole fossil fuel industry was supported with an average of $548 Billions each year.

At the beginning of the 80's, Shell and Exxon admitted that their products were responsible for the increase of GHG on the planet and it was confirmed later by Rex Tillerson CEO of Exxon at the time.

If the fossil fuel industries admitted that they're responsible for a large part of the problem, therefore they should be part of the solution to do something before it's too late.

Fossil fuel industries have reserves left in oil and natural gas for the next 50 years and coal for at least 114 years and rest assured that they will use all of it until the end and it's not the fight against climate change that will stop them.

3-DURING THIS TIME, OUR PLANET IS ON FIRE

As India is undergoing 2 months of extreme weather per year, the University of Hawaii estimates that 74% of the global population could face deadly heat waves before 2100 if Green House Gas (GHG) continue to increase at the current rate.

WILDFIRES

A direct result of heat waves is the increasing number of wildfires in all parts of the globe. In Europe only, the surface of forest burned to the ground has reached 600,000 hectares so far this year, a record since the first data collected in 2006.

4-RECORD DROUGHT IN ALL PARTS OF EUROPE

European countries are undergoing extreme heat waves. As result water level is going down at an alarming rate in rivers and reservoirs. In England people are wondering where the riverThames has gone.

In some regions of the globe, water resources depend mainly on snow melting. However with the anthropogenic climate change the water runoff will become less predictable for population who depend this water supply.

5-ICE MELTING

The Earth has lost 28 trillions tons of ice in less than 30 years with an average of 1,2 trillion ton per year. Half of the glaciers of the world could disappear before 2100 as the current trend in global warming is not about to stop.

Our future depends heavily on glaciers to regulate the Earth's temperature, they are our cooling system. According to "Heidi Sylvestre of Futura Planet", if we are not able to control the rise of the GHG during the next 6 years we will pass the limit of 1,5 degree Celsius and, we're not able today to measure the consequences.

IT SEEMS WE'RE NOT ACCOMPLISHING ANY PROGRESS IN THE FIGHT AGAINST CLIMATE CHANGE

According to the "International Energy Agency" the commitments taken during COP 26 to keep global warming temperature below 1,8 Celsius provoked a certain skepticism among the scientific community.

Many of these commitments need to be ratified by parliaments of most of the countries attending the summit which is quite uncertain as powerful fossil fuel lobbys already have influence over most governments on the planet.

6-INDUSTRIAL CHIMNEYS ARE TECHNOLOGY OF THE PAST AND IN VIEW OF THE CLIMATE CRISIS, IT BECOMES URGENT THAT WE FIND AN ALTERNATIVE

Heavy industry makes products that are central to our modern way of life but is also responsible for nearly 40% of global carbon dioxide emissions. Steel, ciment and chemicals are the top three emitting industries and are among the most difficult to decarbonize, owing to technical factors like the need for very high heat and process emissions of carbon dioxide, and economic factors including low profit margins capital intensity. (BROOKINGS, Samantha Gross, June 2021)

If engineers can design and build industrial plants worth hundreds of $millions using equipments, processes and chemicals they sure can design and build an annex to the plant and use the same knowledge to capture, recuperate and process the toxic residues they're actually shooting up to the sky.

MESSAGE TO THE POLITICAL CLASS

When more rivers will run dry as it does now, when the harvests will burn in the field because of steady drought and heat waves, when extreme weather will hit cities around the globe, when food and drinking water will become scarce, all those who keep stalling the fight against climate change simply to protect their asset will, finally realize that money is something they cannot eat.

Since 1995, governments have been sending TALKERS to the UN summits. "Talkers are usually more articulate than DOERS since talk is their specialty (T. Sowell). Enough with talking, we need action.

After 26 COP summits it is obvious than we cannot conduct a fight against climate change by working only 2 weeks in a year. What the planet needs is someone in charge on a full time basis who will go thru all the commitments taken recently by the participating countries.

Most commitments may take years to accomplish making legislation urgent.

Our own needs are compromising the legacy we are leaving to future generation. We must force our governments to change the actual trend. Let us be clear about something, we are the victims of Climate Change and our grandchildren will have to fight for food and water if nothing is done starting today.

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jcmarchi · 5 months

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Wildfires can unlock toxic metal particles from soils - Technology Org

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/wildfires-can-unlock-toxic-metal-particles-from-soils-technology-org/

Wildfires can unlock toxic metal particles from soils - Technology Org

A new study from Stanford University finds that wildfires can transform benign metals in soils and plants into toxic particles that easily become airborne.

Burned serpentine chaparral at McLaughlin Natural Reserve after the 2020 LNU Lightning Complex. Image credit: Alandra Lopez

Published in Nature Communications, the research documents high levels of a hazardous form of the metal chromium at wildfire sites with chromium-rich soils and certain kinds of vegetation compared to adjacent unburned sites. Known as hexavalent chromium or chromium 6, this is the same toxin made notorious by the 2000 film Erin Brockovich.

“Our study suggests far more attention should be paid to wildfire-modified chromium, and we presume additional metals as well, to characterize the overall threats wildfires pose to human health more thoroughly,” said lead study author Alandra Lopez, a postdoctoral scholar in Earth system science at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability.

An overlooked hazard

Smoke plumes from wildfires are known to carry dangerous air pollutants, including gases, organic aerosols, and fine particulate matter, which can trigger asthma attacks, heart attacks, and early death.

Scientists and regulators have focused less on potential harm from metals like chromium, common in soils across the western United States, Australia, Brazil, Europe, Indonesia, and South Africa. With wildfires expected to become more frequent and severe due to climate change, the researchers said the health risks posed by airborne chromium to firefighters, downwind residents, and others must be better understood.

“In the complex mixture of gasses and particles that wildfires spew out as smoke and leave behind as dust, heavy metals such as chromium have largely been overlooked,” said senior study author Scott Fendorf, the Terry Huffington Professor in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability.

Scientific opportunity knocks

In nature, chromium mostly occurs in a form known as trivalent chromium or chromium 3, an essential nutrient that our bodies use to break down glucose. Chromium 6, which increases cancer risk when inhaled or ingested via contaminated drinking water, most often results from industrial processes. High levels of chromium 6 historically have entered the environment from industrial runoff and wastewater.

Although natural chemical processes can trigger this transformation, laboratory experiments led by researchers at Australia’s Southern Cross University provided evidence in 2019 that chromium 6 could also form rapidly from chromium 3 in surface soils heated by wildfires.

Intrigued by those findings, Fendorf and Lopez set out to test the theory that wildfires can leave soils contaminated with chromium 6. Focusing on California’s North Coast Range, they identified sites in four ecological preserves that have recently burned across soils formed from naturally chromium-rich rocks, such as serpentinite.

Lopez collected soil from the preserves and separated out the smallest particles, which are most sensitive to wind transport. She measured hexavalent chromium concentrations in this ultra-fine dust from burned and unburned areas, and gathered data on the local fire severity and the prevailing soil, underlying geology, and ecosystem types, ranging from open grasslands to dense forests.

The researchers found all these factors influenced chromium 6 levels in soil. Most dramatically, in the chromium-rich areas where vegetation allowed fires to burn at high heat for long durations, toxic chromium concentrations came in approximately seven times higher than in unburned areas, suggesting significant amounts of chromium 6 could become airborne.

Mitigating the risks

In terms of exposure risks, fire-induced toxic chromium would initially be encountered by first responders and people living near the conflagrations. Even after fires end, local communities downwind could be exposed because strong winds may carry fine particles of chromium-laced soil.

Much of the risk of inhaling airborne hexavalent chromium would likely decline after the first big rainfall washes the metal away and underground, said Fendorf, who is also a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. Yet before the rains come – which might take many months, especially as climate change brings more frequent and severe droughts to the American West – exposure risks would loom for people working to revegetate or rebuild burned areas, as well as recreationists checking out burn scars. More research is needed to understand potential threats to ecosystems and human health if fire-induced chromium 6 is washing into waterways or groundwater.

Fendorf said future research into wildfire-related toxic chromium exposure could help inform public health guidance, such as recommendations to wear an N95 mask when visiting a burn site.

To learn more, Lopez is now contributing to an assessment of firefighter health and exposure to metal-containing dusts. With support from the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment’s Environmental Ventures Program, Fendorf is working with colleagues to develop geospatial tools for predicting threats of toxic chromium generation and downstream exposure. These tools could eventually help researchers develop better ways to limit exposure to chromium and other overlooked metallic pollutants.

“While chromium is one of the metals of highest concern, we’re sure it’s not the only one,” said Fendorf. “We expect subsequent studies to bear out additional metal inhalation exposure risks posed by wildfires.”

Source: Stanford University

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spacetimewithstuartgary · 6 months

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A Fiery October in Bolivia

For much of September and October 2023, satellites detected widespread fire activity in Bolivia’s lowlands. That’s common in a country with a long-standing practice of lighting fires to stimulate new growth in pastures and to clear land for crops. But the fires this year were especially fierce at times due to ongoing drought and heat.

On October 22, 2023, VIIRS (the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) on the NASA-NOAA Suomi NPP satellite acquired this image of smoke streaming from fires burning in parts of the Bolivian departments of Beni, Santa Cruz, La Paz, and Cochabamba. A detailed view (below) from MODIS (the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) on NASA’s Aqua satellite shows intense fires burning along the Ichilo River east of Puerto Villarroel, an area that has experienced widespread deforestation to its east in recent decades.

Fires occur in this region every year and are usually the result of human activity, explained Oswaldo Maillard, a researcher with the Bolivian-based nonprofit, the Foundation for the Conservation of the Chiquitano Forest. One of the most common causes is a slash-and-burn practice called chaqueo, the seasonal burning of pastures and crops to clear away old vegetation and prepare the soil for planting. Fires are also used to burn off piles of trees that have been cut to make space for new fields and pastures.

However, the unusual heat and severe drought that have parched Bolivia in recent months and years energized and intensified these seasonal chaqueo fires. Some of them spread into natural ecosystems, including the grasslands of the Beni savanna and the Chiquitano forests of northern and eastern Bolivia. During the peak of the burning in late October, the smoke was so heavy that the Bolivian government closed some 3,650 schools—about 15 percent of the national total, according to news reports.

“Fires are recorded every year,” Maillard said. “But they became a major story on Bolivian television and in newspapers in October because smoke was carried in a southeasterly direction into Santa Cruz, Bolivia’s largest city.”

The SERVIR Amazon Fire Dashboard, a project of NASA and USAID, registered 7,761 active fires in Bolivia on October 22, 2023. Nearly half of these (3,148) were classified as savanna or grassland fires, with many of them burning in the Beni Savanna. Many others (3,380) were classified as small-scale land clearing and agriculture fires, which were more evenly distributed throughout all parts of the country.

The rest of the fires detected that day by VIIRS were either deforestation fires (741) or understory fires (492). Though smaller in number, these two types of fires are especially significant because they cause long-term damage to forests, explained Douglas Morton, an Earth systems scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. While grasslands can grow back the next year after a fire, it typically takes burned tropical forests many decades or longer to recover. Most of these fires, including those shown near Puerto Villarroel, occurred in corridors of development along rivers and roads.

Deforestation is on the rise in Bolivia. According to the World Resources Institute’s Global Forest Watch, Bolivia saw a record-high level of primary forest loss in 2022, an increase of 32 percent from 2021 levels. For the third year in a row, Bolivia was third behind only Brazil and the Democratic Republic of the Congo in primary forest loss, the institute reported.

Bolivia’s Ministry of Defense reported that nearly 3,825 firefighters and 45 military units played a role in fighting wildfires between June and November 2023. According to the Bolivian government, more than 2.7 million hectares (10,000 square miles), an area roughly the size of Vermont, had burned as of November 2023. That’s down somewhat from 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022—all years when more than 4 million hectares burned.

After the widespread fire activity in September and much of October, a period of rain during the last week of October helped tamp down many of the fires. “However, most of the large fires are still burning as of November 6,” said Morton. “It often takes a sustained period of rain to truly extinguish a fire and prevent spread in grassland and forest areas.”

NASA Earth Observatory images by Lauren Dauphin, using VIIRS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE, GIBS/Worldview, and the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership and MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE and GIBS/Worldview. Story by Adam Voiland.

#science #space #news #nasa #earth observatory

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brookston · 7 months

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Holidays 10.15

Holidays

Amaryllis Day (French Republic)

Blind Americans Equality Day

Breast Health Day (EU)

Cayenne Festival (French Guiana)

Coup d'État Anniversary Day (Burkina Faso)

Day of Merriment (Republic of Molossia)

Fete Nationale de l'Evacuation (Evacuation Day; Tunisia)

Ghatasthapana (Nepal)

Global Handwashing Day

”I Love Lucy” Day

International Archeology Day

International Day of Older People (Australia)

International Day of Rural Women (UN)

International Power of One Day

King Father’s Commemoration Day (Cambodia)

Lucille Ball Day

Mahakiki (Hawaiian New Year Season begins)

Maths Day

Mertz of All Possible Mertzes

Mother’s Day (Malawi)

My Mom Is a Student Day

National Aesthetician Day

National Cherish Black Women Day

National Grouch Day

National HSA Awareness Day

National Latinix AIDS Awareness Day

National Pug Day

National Riley Day

National Shut-In Visitation Day

National Stations Day (UK)

National Tree Planting Day (Sri Lanka)

Pacific Leatherback Conservation Day (California)

Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day (Canada, Italy, UK, US)

Pynkalycious Day

Rainbow Pickling Day

Rectification Day (Burkina Faso)

Sewing Lovers’ Day

Shwamae Su’mae Day (Wales)

Shine a Light Night

Teachers’ Day (Brazil)

Twist and Shout Day

White Cane Safety Day

World Anatomy Day

World Day of Amblyopia

World Home Artificial Nutrition Day

World Rural Women’s Day (Malawi)

World Students’ Day (India, UN)

Food & Drink Celebrations

Champagne Day

Dine With TV Dinners On the Floor Night

National Cheese Curd Day

National Chicken Cacciatore Day

National Lemon Bar Day

National Mushroom Day

National Red Wine Day

National Roast Pheasant Day

National Shawarma Day (Canada)

3rd Sunday in October

Brown Ale Day [3rd Sunday]

I Am An American Day (Florida) [3rd Sunday]

Mother’s Day (Argentina) [3rd Sunday]

National Police Officer’s Spouses’ Day [3rd Sunday]

Sunday School Teacher Appreciation Day [3rd Sunday]

World Toy Camera Day [3rd Sunday]

Independence Days

Parvia (Declared; 2019) [unrecognized]

Feast Days

Bruno of Querfurt (Christian; Saint)

Cúan of Ahascragh (Christian; Saint)

Dashain begins [Varies from the Bright Moon; lasts 15 days] (a.k.a. ...

Dashain (Nepal)

Dasara (Hindi)

Dashera (Hindus in India)

Dassain (Bhutan)

Dussehra (India)

Ghatasthapana [1st Day of Dashain]

Mohani (Katmandu Valley)

Navaratri (Hindus in India)

Vijaya Dashami (Nepal)

Dragonbunny (Muppetism)

Equirria (October Equus, sacrifice of a horse to Mars; Old Roman Empire)

Feast of the Three Noble Ladies (Ancient Egypt)

Hobbes (Positivist; Saint)

Hospicius (a.k.a. Hospis; Christian; Saint)

Ides of October (Ancient Rome)

James Tissot (Artology)

John Vanderlyn (Artology)

Ludi Capitolini (Jupiter games; Ancient Rome)

Poetry Day (Ancient Rome)

Ralph Albert Blakelock (Artology)

Richard Speck Day (Church of the SubGenius; Saint)

Teresa of Ávila (founded Reformation of the Barefoot Carmelites; Christian; Saint)

Thecla of Kitzingen (a.k.a. Tecla; Christian; Saint)

Winter Nights: Day of the Freya and the Disir (Pagan)

Yet Another Noodle Day Day (Pastafarian)

Lucky & Unlucky Days

Sakimake (先負 Japan) [Bad luck in the morning, good luck in the afternoon.]

Premieres

The Affluent Society, by John Kenneth Galbraith (Economy Book; 1958)

Alice Plays Cupid (Disney Cartoon; 1925)

The Barbary Pirates, by C.S. Forester (History Book; 1953)

Boom at the Top or Angry Young Moose (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S5, Ep. 221; 1963)

Bread and Wine, by Ignazio Silone (Novel; 1937)

Charlotte’s Web, by E.B. White (Children’s Book; 1952)

The Cincinnati Kid (Film; 1965)

Clock Cleaners (Disney Cartoon; 1937)

Curb Your Enthusiasm (TV Series; 2000)

The Dragon Reborn, by Robert Jordan (Novel; 1991) [Wheel of Time #3]

Elvis’ Christmas Album, by Elvis Presley (Album; 1957)

Figaro and Cleo (Disney Cartoon; 1943)

Fight Club (Film; 1999)

The Fires of Heaven, by Robert Jordan (Novel; 1993) [Wheel of Time #5]

For Once in My Life, by Stevie Wonder (Song; 1968)

Fur, Fur Away or Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S5, Ep. 222; 1963)

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, by Elton John (Song; 1973)

Good Golly Miss Molly, recorded by Little Richard (Song; 1956)

The Great Dictator (Film; 1940)

The Heart of Saturday Night, by Tom Waits (Album; 1974)

Heidi (Film; 1937)

I Love Lucy (TV Series; 1951)

I Wish I Had Wings (WB MM Cartoon; 1932)

The Jazz Fool (Disney Cartoon; 1929)

Jay and Silent Bob Reboot (Film; 2019)

La Mer, by Claude Debussy (Symphonic Suite; 1905)

The Last Duel (Film; 2021)

The Lion King (Broadway Musical; 1997)

Lord of Chaos, by Robert Jordan (Novel; 1994) [Wheel of Time #6]

Mr. Wonderful (Film; 1993)

The Nightmare Before Christmas (Animated Film; 1993)

The Night the City Sang, by Peter Desbarats (Poetry; 1977)

Nowhere Boy (Film; 2010)

Paint Your Wagon (Film; 1969)

Porky’s Naughty Nephew (WB LT Cartoon; 1936)

The Power of Positive Thinking, by Norman Vincent Peale (Self-Help Book; 1952)

Power Windows, by Rush (Album; 1985)

Prince Caspian, by C.S. Lewis (Novel; 1951) [The Chronicles of Narnia #2]

RED (Film; 2010)

Rock Me Amadeus, by Falco (Song; 1985)

Rudy (Film; 1993)

Sabrina (Film; 1954)

The Skin of Our Teeth, by Thornton Wilder (Play; 1942)

Slip Sliding’ Away, by Paul Simon (Song; 1977)

Social Lion (Disney Cartoon; 1954)

Soup’s On (Disney Cartoon; 1948)

The Straight Story (Film; 1999)

Surfing with the Alien, by Joe Satriani (Album; 1987)

Team America: World Police (Animated Film; 2004)

To Have and Have Not, by Ernest Hemingway (Novel; 1937)

Tupelo Honey, by Van Morrison (Album; 1971)

Two Scent’s Worth (WB MM Cartoon; 1955)

Why Not Me, by The Judds (Album; 1984)

Today’s Name Days

Aurelia, Theresia (Austria)

Rezika, Tekla, Tereza, Terezija, Valter (Croatia)

Tereza (Czech Republic)

Hedevig (Denmark)

Eda, Ede, Hädi, Häidi, Heda, Hedi, Hedvig, Heidi, Heivi (Estonia)

Helvi, Heta (Finland)

Thérèse (France)

Aurelia, Franziska, Therese, Theresia (Germany)

Loukianos (Greece)

Teréz (Hungary)

Teresa (Italy)

Eda, Ede, Hedviga, Jadviga (Latvia)

Domantė, Gailiminas, Leonardas, Teresė (Lithuania)

Hedda, Hedvig (Norway)

Brunon, Gościsława, Jadwiga, Sewer, Tekla, Teresa (Poland)

Luchian (Romania)

Terézia (Slovakia)

Teresa (Spain)

Hedvig, Hillevi (Sweden)

Lucian (Ukraine)

Essence, Terence, Teresa,Terrance, Terrence, Terri, Terry, Tess,Tessa, Theresa, Trace, Tracey, Traci, Tracy (USA)

Today is Also…

Day of Year: Day 288 of 2024; 77 days remaining in the year

ISO: Day 7 of week 41 of 2023

Celtic Tree Calendar: Gort (Ivy) [Day 13 of 28]

Chinese: Month 9 (Ten-Xu), Day 1 (Bing-Wu)

Chinese Year of the: Rabbit 4721 (until February 10, 2024)

Hebrew: 30 Tishri 5784

Islamic: 30 Rabi I 1445

J Cal: 18 Shù; Foursday [18 of 30]

Julian: 2 October 2023

Moon: 1%: Waxing Crescent

Positivist: 8 Descartes (11th Month) [Hobbes]

Runic Half Month: Wyn (Joy) [Day 4 of 15]

Season: Autumn (Day 22 of 89)

Zodiac: Libra (Day 22 of 30)

Calendar Changes

菊月 [Júyuè] (Chinese Lunisolar Calendar) [Month 9 of 12] (Chrysanthemum Month) [Dog Month]

#calendar #Holidays

1 note · View note

brookstonalmanac · 7 months

Text

Holidays 10.15

Holidays

Amaryllis Day (French Republic)

Blind Americans Equality Day

Breast Health Day (EU)

Cayenne Festival (French Guiana)

Coup d'État Anniversary Day (Burkina Faso)

Day of Merriment (Republic of Molossia)

Fete Nationale de l'Evacuation (Evacuation Day; Tunisia)

Ghatasthapana (Nepal)

Global Handwashing Day

”I Love Lucy” Day

International Archeology Day

International Day of Older People (Australia)

International Day of Rural Women (UN)

International Power of One Day

King Father’s Commemoration Day (Cambodia)

Lucille Ball Day

Mahakiki (Hawaiian New Year Season begins)

Maths Day

Mertz of All Possible Mertzes

Mother’s Day (Malawi)

My Mom Is a Student Day

National Aesthetician Day

National Cherish Black Women Day

National Grouch Day

National HSA Awareness Day

National Latinix AIDS Awareness Day

National Pug Day

National Riley Day

National Shut-In Visitation Day

National Stations Day (UK)

National Tree Planting Day (Sri Lanka)

Pacific Leatherback Conservation Day (California)

Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day (Canada, Italy, UK, US)

Pynkalycious Day

Rainbow Pickling Day

Rectification Day (Burkina Faso)

Sewing Lovers’ Day

Shwamae Su’mae Day (Wales)

Shine a Light Night

Teachers’ Day (Brazil)

Twist and Shout Day

White Cane Safety Day

World Anatomy Day

World Day of Amblyopia

World Home Artificial Nutrition Day

World Rural Women’s Day (Malawi)

World Students’ Day (India, UN)

Food & Drink Celebrations

Champagne Day

Dine With TV Dinners On the Floor Night

National Cheese Curd Day

National Chicken Cacciatore Day

National Lemon Bar Day

National Mushroom Day

National Red Wine Day

National Roast Pheasant Day

National Shawarma Day (Canada)

3rd Sunday in October

Brown Ale Day [3rd Sunday]

I Am An American Day (Florida) [3rd Sunday]

Mother’s Day (Argentina) [3rd Sunday]

National Police Officer’s Spouses’ Day [3rd Sunday]

Sunday School Teacher Appreciation Day [3rd Sunday]

World Toy Camera Day [3rd Sunday]

Independence Days

Parvia (Declared; 2019) [unrecognized]

Feast Days

Bruno of Querfurt (Christian; Saint)

Cúan of Ahascragh (Christian; Saint)

Dashain begins [Varies from the Bright Moon; lasts 15 days] (a.k.a. ...

Dashain (Nepal)

Dasara (Hindi)

Dashera (Hindus in India)

Dassain (Bhutan)

Dussehra (India)

Ghatasthapana [1st Day of Dashain]

Mohani (Katmandu Valley)

Navaratri (Hindus in India)

Vijaya Dashami (Nepal)

Dragonbunny (Muppetism)

Equirria (October Equus, sacrifice of a horse to Mars; Old Roman Empire)

Feast of the Three Noble Ladies (Ancient Egypt)

Hobbes (Positivist; Saint)

Hospicius (a.k.a. Hospis; Christian; Saint)

Ides of October (Ancient Rome)

James Tissot (Artology)

John Vanderlyn (Artology)

Ludi Capitolini (Jupiter games; Ancient Rome)

Poetry Day (Ancient Rome)

Ralph Albert Blakelock (Artology)

Richard Speck Day (Church of the SubGenius; Saint)

Teresa of Ávila (founded Reformation of the Barefoot Carmelites; Christian; Saint)

Thecla of Kitzingen (a.k.a. Tecla; Christian; Saint)

Winter Nights: Day of the Freya and the Disir (Pagan)

Yet Another Noodle Day Day (Pastafarian)

Lucky & Unlucky Days

Sakimake (先負 Japan) [Bad luck in the morning, good luck in the afternoon.]

Premieres

The Affluent Society, by John Kenneth Galbraith (Economy Book; 1958)

Alice Plays Cupid (Disney Cartoon; 1925)

The Barbary Pirates, by C.S. Forester (History Book; 1953)

Boom at the Top or Angry Young Moose (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S5, Ep. 221; 1963)

Bread and Wine, by Ignazio Silone (Novel; 1937)

Charlotte’s Web, by E.B. White (Children’s Book; 1952)

The Cincinnati Kid (Film; 1965)

Clock Cleaners (Disney Cartoon; 1937)

Curb Your Enthusiasm (TV Series; 2000)

The Dragon Reborn, by Robert Jordan (Novel; 1991) [Wheel of Time #3]

Elvis’ Christmas Album, by Elvis Presley (Album; 1957)

Figaro and Cleo (Disney Cartoon; 1943)

Fight Club (Film; 1999)

The Fires of Heaven, by Robert Jordan (Novel; 1993) [Wheel of Time #5]

For Once in My Life, by Stevie Wonder (Song; 1968)

Fur, Fur Away or Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S5, Ep. 222; 1963)

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, by Elton John (Song; 1973)

Good Golly Miss Molly, recorded by Little Richard (Song; 1956)

The Great Dictator (Film; 1940)

The Heart of Saturday Night, by Tom Waits (Album; 1974)

Heidi (Film; 1937)

I Love Lucy (TV Series; 1951)

I Wish I Had Wings (WB MM Cartoon; 1932)

The Jazz Fool (Disney Cartoon; 1929)

Jay and Silent Bob Reboot (Film; 2019)

La Mer, by Claude Debussy (Symphonic Suite; 1905)

The Last Duel (Film; 2021)

The Lion King (Broadway Musical; 1997)

Lord of Chaos, by Robert Jordan (Novel; 1994) [Wheel of Time #6]

Mr. Wonderful (Film; 1993)

The Nightmare Before Christmas (Animated Film; 1993)

The Night the City Sang, by Peter Desbarats (Poetry; 1977)

Nowhere Boy (Film; 2010)

Paint Your Wagon (Film; 1969)

Porky’s Naughty Nephew (WB LT Cartoon; 1936)

The Power of Positive Thinking, by Norman Vincent Peale (Self-Help Book; 1952)

Power Windows, by Rush (Album; 1985)

Prince Caspian, by C.S. Lewis (Novel; 1951) [The Chronicles of Narnia #2]

RED (Film; 2010)

Rock Me Amadeus, by Falco (Song; 1985)

Rudy (Film; 1993)

Sabrina (Film; 1954)

The Skin of Our Teeth, by Thornton Wilder (Play; 1942)

Slip Sliding’ Away, by Paul Simon (Song; 1977)

Social Lion (Disney Cartoon; 1954)

Soup’s On (Disney Cartoon; 1948)

The Straight Story (Film; 1999)

Surfing with the Alien, by Joe Satriani (Album; 1987)

Team America: World Police (Animated Film; 2004)

To Have and Have Not, by Ernest Hemingway (Novel; 1937)

Tupelo Honey, by Van Morrison (Album; 1971)

Two Scent’s Worth (WB MM Cartoon; 1955)

Why Not Me, by The Judds (Album; 1984)

Today’s Name Days

Aurelia, Theresia (Austria)

Rezika, Tekla, Tereza, Terezija, Valter (Croatia)

Tereza (Czech Republic)

Hedevig (Denmark)

Eda, Ede, Hädi, Häidi, Heda, Hedi, Hedvig, Heidi, Heivi (Estonia)

Helvi, Heta (Finland)

Thérèse (France)

Aurelia, Franziska, Therese, Theresia (Germany)

Loukianos (Greece)

Teréz (Hungary)

Teresa (Italy)

Eda, Ede, Hedviga, Jadviga (Latvia)

Domantė, Gailiminas, Leonardas, Teresė (Lithuania)

Hedda, Hedvig (Norway)

Brunon, Gościsława, Jadwiga, Sewer, Tekla, Teresa (Poland)

Luchian (Romania)

Terézia (Slovakia)

Teresa (Spain)

Hedvig, Hillevi (Sweden)

Lucian (Ukraine)

Essence, Terence, Teresa,Terrance, Terrence, Terri, Terry, Tess,Tessa, Theresa, Trace, Tracey, Traci, Tracy (USA)

Today is Also…

Day of Year: Day 288 of 2024; 77 days remaining in the year

ISO: Day 7 of week 41 of 2023

Celtic Tree Calendar: Gort (Ivy) [Day 13 of 28]

Chinese: Month 9 (Ten-Xu), Day 1 (Bing-Wu)

Chinese Year of the: Rabbit 4721 (until February 10, 2024)

Hebrew: 30 Tishri 5784

Islamic: 30 Rabi I 1445

J Cal: 18 Shù; Foursday [18 of 30]

Julian: 2 October 2023

Moon: 1%: Waxing Crescent

Positivist: 8 Descartes (11th Month) [Hobbes]

Runic Half Month: Wyn (Joy) [Day 4 of 15]

Season: Autumn (Day 22 of 89)

Zodiac: Libra (Day 22 of 30)

Calendar Changes

菊月 [Júyuè] (Chinese Lunisolar Calendar) [Month 9 of 12] (Chrysanthemum Month) [Dog Month]

#Holidays

0 notes

kumaradhikaryofficial · 1 year

Text

Prevent Air Pollution, Protect Nature.

Over the years, air pollution has become the greatest environmental challenge faced by people, especially in urban areas. Most often, it is caused by human activities like burning of fossil fuels in thermal power plants, and other industrial processes like petroleum refining, smelting, mining, construction, transportation, agriculture etc. In addition to human sources of air pollution, it can also be caused by natural processes. For example, volcanic eruptions release Sulphur dioxide and other pollutants, which react in the atmosphere to produce volcanic smog, called as ‘Vog’.

Air pollution can occur at various scales, from local to regional.

Local air pollution - This occurs at a small spatial scale. For example, indoor air pollution caused due to use of unsafe cooking fuel like wood by poorer households in India is a type of local air pollution.

Regional air pollution - It is generally caused by the running of industries, thermal power plants and vehicles. It is mostly a problem in urban areas of the world. However, in developing countries like India, the burning of crop residue after harvest is also a major contributor to regional air pollution. there have been two recent examples where large-scale forest fires (Brazil's forest fires of 2019 and Australian bush fires of 2019- 2020) caused regional air pollution.

Types of Air Pollutants:-

Based on origin, air pollutants can be classified as Primary and Secondary Pollutants.

Primary Pollutants - These are emitted directly into the air from sources at the Earth’s surface. Examples- Carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and sulphur dioxide.

Secondary Pollutants - The regional gases can also react chemically in the atmosphere to form other compounds which are known as secondary pollutants. Examples- are ozone, smog, and photochemical pollutant.

Particulate Matter- Apart from gasses, the second type of pollutant is a particulate matter which consists of a wide range of liquid and solid particles known scientifically as aerosols. Some of these are visible as smoke, soot or dust; The smallest of these particles are hazardous to human health. Of particular concern are PM 2.5 and PM 10 as these can be easily inhaled into the lungs and can be absorbed into the bloodstream. Such particulate matter is called Respirable Particulate Matter. As with gases, particles can be directly emitted into the air or can form gases. For example, such particles from wood burning can cause a brown haze over the region and larger particles may interfere with plant growth because they deposit on the leaves.

Air pollution has both natural and human sources

Natural Air Pollution

Dust from Natural sources, usually large areas of land with little or no vegetation

Methane is emitted by various sources.

Radon gas from radioactive decay within the Earth’s crust.

Smoke and carbon monoxide form Wildfire

Vegetation, in some regions, emits environmentally significant amounts of Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) on warmer days. These volatile organic compounds react with primary anthropogenic pollutants- specifically, NOx, SO2, and anthropogenic organic carbon compounds- to produce a seasonal haze of secondary pollutants. Black gum, poplar, oak and willow are some examples of vegetation that can produce abundant VOCs. The VOC production from these species results in ozone levels up to eight times higher than the low-impact tree species.

Volcanic activity, which produces sulphur, chlorine and ash particulates

Anthropogenic Sources

Stationary sources include smoke stacks of power plants, factories and waste incinerators, as well as furnaces and other types of fuel-burning heating devices. In developing and poor countries, traditional biomass burning is the major source of air pollutants; traditional biomass includes wood, crop waste and dung.

Mobile sources include motor vehicles, marine vessels, and aircraft.

Fumes from paint, hair spray, varnish, aerosol sprays and other solvents

Waste deposition in landfills generates methane. Methane is also an asphyxiant and displaces oxygen in an enclosed space. Asphyxia or suffocation may result if the oxygen concentration is reduced to below 19.5% by displacement.

Military resources, such as nuclear weapons, toxic gases, germ warfare and rocketry

Particulate matter from mining activities.

What are the sources of outdoor Air Pollution?

The sources of outdoor air pollution are:

Burning of fossil fuels in

Automobiles, domestic cooking, and heating

Power stations and industries (primarily the chemical, metal, and paper industries)

Mining activities leading to dust as well as fires.

Burning biofuels, tropical rainforests,wastes of all kinds, etc.

Natural emissions from animals and decaying organis matter

Temporary, but severe, air pollution can occur due to disasters like earthquakes, volcano eruptions, dust storms, leak of gases (like the Bhopal gas tragedy case), and armed conflicts, etc. Even festivals (for example, Diwali with its crackers) can create air pollution. Dust storms are typically formed in desert areas and from there they can spread to places thousands of kilometres away.

Industries and automobiles are by far the main contributors to outdoor air pollution across the world.

What are the effects of outdoor Air Pollution

At low levels air pollutants irritate the eyes and cause inflammation of the respiratory tract. If the person already suffers from a respiratory illness, air pollution may lead to the condition becomimg chronic at a later stage. It can also accentuate skin allergies.

Many pollutants also depress the immune system, making the body more prone to infections. Carbon monoxide from automobile emissions can cause headache at lower levels and mental impairment and even death at higher levels.

Particulate matter can reduce visibility, soil clothes, corrode metals, and erode buildings. On a larger scale. Air pollution leads to acid rain, ozone layer depletion, and global warming.

The WHO Global Burden of Disease Assessment for 2010 estimated that 627000 premature deaths in India could be attributed to outdoor air pollution. Of the pollution-related risks, a substantial increase was observed in heart diseases, cerebrovascular diseases, chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases, lower respiratory infections, and cancers (in the trachea, lungs, and bronchitis). These estimates do not include acute impacts such as asthma attacks, eye irritations, and other respiratory ailments. We do not yet know the long-term health impacts of air pollution on vulnerable populations such as children and the elderly.

We give importance and attention to outdoor air pollution, but we do not realize that indoor pollution can be equally damaging.

Pesticides,mosquito repellents, cleaning agents, etc. used in urban households can cause toxic conditions. Building materials like asbestos, glass fibre, paints, glues, and varnishes are all health hazards. They can cause irritation of the eyes and skin, respiratory ailments, and cancer.

Air-conditioned rooms and offices cause a broad spectrum of health complaints because the sealed space accumulates various contaminants. Cigarette smoke affects both smokers and non-smokers. The concentration of pollutants indoors may be five times more than outdoors.

The most common pollutants in urban interiors are cigarette smoke, gases from stoves,formaldehyde (from carpets and furniture), pesticides, cleaning solvents, and ozone (from photocopiers). Organisms like viruses, bacteria, fungi, dust mites, and pollens also thrive in the many ducts found in office buildings.

Urban indoor pollution results in ailments like colds, influenza, and upset stomachs. Since these are common ailments, the connection with indoor pollution is often missed. Indoor pollution can also cause eye irritations, nausea, depression, etc., collectively called the ‘sick Building Syndrome’.

Air Pollution Control and Abatement

There exist two basic strategies for controlling air pollution - to reduce the generation of air pollutants or to collect, capture and retain the pollutants before they enter the atmosphere. The following are the major ways to achieve this:

Control of pollutants like carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons in urban areas is achievable through pollution control measures for automobiles. It will also limit ozone formation in the lower atmosphere. Clean fuel-based public transport systems like Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) buses or metro rail also help in substantial reduction of emissions. Public transport systems like Bus Rapid Transport (BRT) systems have proved to be effective in reducing vehicular pollution in cities. Globally cities like Curitiba (Brazil), and Bogota (Colombia) have successful examples of BRT systems. In India, BRT systems run in cities like Bhopal, Indore and Ahmedabad. Hybrid cars and electric engines offer another innovative means of emission control.

As the main source of sulphur dioxide emissions is the burning of sulphur-rich coal, so using low-sulphur coal is an obvious solution. A few techniques for this are:

Cleaning up relatively high-sulphur coal to remove sulphur. In this, coal is washed with water. Iron sulphide settles out due to its relatively high density. But cleanup of coal by washing has only limited effectiveness as it removes sulphur only partially.

Coal Gasification -which converts coal that is relatively high in sulphur to a gas in order to remove the sulphur. The gas obtained from coal is quite clean to use.

Supercritical Technology-based Coal Power Plants - These power plants operate at higher temperatures and pressure than traditional power plants. Thermodynamically, such power plants operate at pressure and temperature above the critical point of water. This results in better thermal efficiency of power plants and reduced fuel consumption. Improved efficiency also means fewer emissions of greenhouse gases and pollutants like NOx. SOx and particulate matter.

Emphasis on clean energy sources like solar and wind to reduce dependence on fossil fuel burning for generating electricity.

Particulate pollution control can be done through a variety of settling chambers or collectors. The collectors have a mechanism that causes particles in gases to settle out in a location where they can be collected for disposal. This is an effective way to control particulate pollution from power plants and industry.

#air pollution #biodiversity #environment

0 notes

xtruss · 1 year

Text

The pajé, or Traditional Healer, of an Indigenous Kayapo community. The Indigenous are, by tradition and by law, the stewards of much of the Amazon’s intact wilderness—but the fight over resources has divided them. Photographs by Larissa Zaidan for The New Yorker

Who Can Save the Amazon?

Brazil’s President, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, promises to keep miners and loggers from destroying the rain forest. On the ground, the fight is complicated.

— By Jon Lee Anderson | April 03, 2023

The Brazilian Amazon is riven by two long highways, in the shape of a cross: the BR-163, which extends more than four thousand miles from north to south, and the Trans-Amazonian, which runs twenty-four hundred miles from east to west. The roads were carved from the jungle in the nineteen-seventies, to open the wilderness to settlers and development. The effects have been calamitous. As colonists flooded in, the human population in Brazil’s Amazon has quadrupled, to nearly thirty million. The settlers have created a patchwork of new roads and towns, burning or cutting down millions of acres of forest to harvest timber or to clear land for cattle pasture or soybeans; they have polluted the rivers with mercury as they pan for gold. Since the highways were built, an estimated twenty per cent of the rain forest has been destroyed.

Not long ago, I travelled with the Brazilian photographer Larissa Zaidan from São Paulo to Novo Progresso, a prominent way station along the BR-163. The trip gave a sense of Brazil’s immensity: an hour and a half by plane to the agricultural hub of Sinop, then a ten-hour drive north. For much of the journey, the forest had been shoved back from the road, to make way for grain fields or cattle pasture. Trucks barrelled along, loaded with timber, livestock, and especially soy—the road is known as the Soy Highway. Many vehicles were decorated with green-and-yellow Brazilian flags, an expression of allegiance to Jair Bolsonaro, the country’s right-wing leader. Bolsonaro was defeated in the recent election by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, but his supporters, the Bolsonaristas, still regard him as an emblem of belligerent resistance to anything regarded as aligned with the left.

In office, Bolsonaro had promoted new laws to open up the region’s preserves to loggers, miners, and agribusiness, which inevitably meant burning more of the forest. As fires in the Amazon raged out of control, the smoke clouds were so thick that the skies above São Paulo, hundreds of miles away, became dark for several days. At one point, the French President, Emmanuel Macron, questioned Brazil’s sovereignty over a wilderness that all of humanity depended upon for survival. Bolsonaro reacted by making vulgar comments about Macron’s wife.

An area of the rain forest the size of Belgium was burned during Bolsonaro’s Presidency. Bolsonaro blamed the destruction, absurdly, on a series of foreigners. When I saw Lula in 2019, as he was beginning to ponder a run for office, he exclaimed, “Bolsonaro thinks it was Leonardo DiCaprio who set fire to the Amazon. He thinks it was European N.G.O.s that set fire to the Amazon. He thinks it was Venezuela that poured oil to pollute the beaches of the northeast. That is an insane mind.”

After Lula was reëlected, late last year, he appointed Marina Silva, a widely admired conservationist, as his environment minister. She had served in that role for five years during Lula’s earlier stint as President, but had resigned over his insistence on balancing conservation and development. (One of their disagreements was over the BR-163, which Lula began paving.) Now Lula had invited her back, promising to halt deforestation. After the election, Lula told me that he intended to fulfill his pledge. But he also expressed concern about how unstable the Amazon had become, and he mentioned the boomtown of Novo Progresso as a worrying case in point.

A church on the road to the frontier town of Novo Progresso. In recent decades, evangelical Christianity has boomed in Brazil, providing support to right-wing politicians.

Like many Amazonian frontier towns, Novo Progresso consisted of a roadside strip lined with businesses: truck stops, gold exchanges, hardware stores, bars, evangelical churches, a brothel. A grid of houses extended behind the shop fronts on either side, giving way eventually to bushland and cattle ranches. The jungle had been cleared away from the road for several miles.

This was Bolsonaro country. There were no Lula posters to be seen, but on the way to town we had passed a roadside camp of Bolsonaristas, hung with protest banners decrying the Supreme Court’s decision that Lula had won the election fairly, and calling for “Impeachment Now!” Zaidan and I had been warned to be discreet in Novo Progresso, where many residents were hostile toward journalists, and toward anyone connected with environmental causes. At our motel, the manager asked if we were reporters. We told him no—we were scouting locations for a guarana commercial. With a suspicious look, he replied that it seemed a long way to go to do that.

During Bolsonaro’s first year in office, ranchers around Novo Progresso had proclaimed a “Fire Day” and proceeded to torch the jungle. Like many others who live in the Amazon, they regard the region’s resources as an opportunity, not as a moral obligation. When Biden Administration officials sought to work with Bolsonaro’s government on conservation, the environment minister, Ricardo Salles, proposed instead that Brazil be paid not to burn its forests. (In 2021, Salles was forced to resign after police named him as a suspect in a timber-trafficking venture; he denies any involvement.) When I talked with Salles in São Paulo, he argued that Brazil should not have to sacrifice in order to benefit the rest of the world: “Rich countries are saying, ‘You have to continue to help me to solve the problem that I created. But now we’re going to split the bill.’ I say, ‘No, we’re not going to split the bill. You destroy, you pay.’ ”

In the Amazon, where pristine wilderness often sits alongside degraded land, the question of ownership is fiercely contested—especially where it concerns Indigenous people. Not far from Novo Progresso is the Baú Indigenous Reserve, which Lula created during his previous stint in office. The reserve, some 3.8 million acres of rain forest, is home to several communities of Kayapo—one of the Amazon’s main groups of Indigenous people, who began interacting regularly with settlers in the nineteen-fifties. About twenty-two per cent of the Amazon region now lies within protected reserves such as Baú, but in many places their forests and rivers have been overrun by loggers and gold miners. Bolsonaro vowed to demarcate “not a single millimetre” of Indigenous land during his Presidency, and he had kept his word.

Dulce Sousa, a resident of Novo Progresso, agrees with the former President Jair Bolsonaro that local residents should be free to profit from the forest’s resources.

In Novo Progresso, a woman named Dulce Sousa broke with Bolsonarista protocol by inviting us to her house for coffee. Dulce lives on a residential street near the BR-163, in a modest house with a yard decorated by statues of a cow and a horse. A hale woman in her mid-forties, she ushered us into her kitchen. Her husband, a truck driver, was on the road, but her two teen-age sons wandered in and joined us.

Dulce was from a family of farmers that had come to Novo Progresso twenty years before, hoping to thrive in the newly opened frontier. They had acquired a large tract outside town, but during Lula’s earlier Presidency authorities had stopped them from planting it; it was near Indigenous territory, whose borders were unresolved. Since then, she said, her land had sat idle. Still, she said, she had respected the law, and had made a living instead as a teacher. For a time, she had taught at a Kayapo school in the Baú reserve.

Dulce, like Bolsonaro, insisted that the Indigenous people should be allowed to profit from the forest, even if it means abandoning their traditions. “For me, democracy means that they can choose what they want to do,” she said. “If they want to live from farming, that’s fine. If they want to live on agribusiness, why can’t they? Their perspective is, Why do I have to live in a forest with all these riches that they say exist but, for me to go to the market, I need to wait for my Bolsa Família”—a kind of welfare check—“or the next harvest? They have this desire. Even those who say they don’t have the desire have it. But there are people above them who oppress them.”

After the recent Presidential election, Dulce had joined a demonstration at the edge of town, where Bolsonaristas were blocking the highway—the same conflict that Lula had mentioned to me. She believed, like Bolsonaro, that Lula was a communist and a thief. “Who would vote for a thief?” she said. When I asked whether Bolsonaro was immune to corruption, she said that she didn’t particularly care if he won, as long as Lula lost: “Let the military take over the government.”

The rally had devolved into gunfire between the police and the Bolsonaristas. Dulce had a plastic bag of mementos, which she spilled onto the kitchen table: spent rubber bullets, tear-gas cannisters, brass shell casings. Among the protesters, she said, were Kayapo who supported mining and logging on the reserve. “Why were they there?” she asked. “Because they want to work, to learn from us, and to produce.”

Many of the region’s Indigenous activists rejected this idea. On Novo Progresso’s main strip, a Kayapo N.G.O. called Instituto Kabu maintained a walled compound, patrolled by an armed guard. When we arrived, we found a sturdily built man with a headdress of parrot feathers working on a laptop. He was Mydjere Mekrãgnotire, the organization’s vice-president. Mydjere, who also served as the coördinator of Indigenous education for Pará state, spoke urgently about a dire situation.

“More than four years ago, there was not much deforestation around Novo Progresso,” he said. “But after President Bolsonaro said that he was going to allow people to mine inside Indigenous lands, that he was going to allow Indigenous people to produce inside their reserves, and do agribusiness, that’s when the prospectors and loggers said, ‘Hey, he’s on our side, let’s invade.’ ”

During the most intense periods of clearing land, Mydjere told me, “You see smoke, burning everywhere.” He argued that Kayapo who coöperated with outsiders were being deceived. “The prospectors, the loggers go straight to the chiefs and make false promises,” he said. “They say that they are going to extract gold from the land and that the chiefs are going to get rich. ‘I will give you a truck,’ they say. And the chiefs end up falling into the trap. But, when they make these arrangements, only the chiefs benefit. The community does not.”

On the road from Novo Progresso to Baú Village.

The white settlers of Novo Progresso had a transactional interest in the Kayapo, Mydjere told me: “They say they are our friends, but, after they run out of all the gold and wood, they are no longer friends. In the city of Novo Progresso, they are not very friendly to us Indigenous people who defend the environment.”

A couple of months earlier, Mydjere said, the staff at Kabu had received an anonymous threat: leave town or die. For a time, everyone had been too frightened to go to the office, but eventually they had returned, and so far nothing more had happened. But, he added worriedly, the recent violent protest that Dulce Sousa mentioned had been organized by the same loggers, ranchers, prospectors, and businessmen who had been invading the Kayapo lands. “With this new government of Lula’s, he says that there will be no mining in the Indigenous land,” he said. “He says he will not allow deforestation for agribusiness. That’s why people don’t like him.”

While I was visiting Novo Progresso, Lula was in Egypt for the cop27 climate-change conference, where he met with Brazilian Indigenous leaders and vowed his total support. In mid-January, a few days after thousands of Bolsonaristas launched a riotous attack on the capital, Lula announced that an activist named Sônia Guajajara would serve as the leader of a newly created ministry for Indigenous peoples. Later, the two visited the territory of the Yanomami people, a huge reserve in the northern Amazon. During Bolsonaro’s tenure, twenty thousand gold prospectors—garimpeiros—had invaded, spreading disease and destruction. Lula called what was being done to the Yanomami a “genocide,” and vowed to clear out the miners. People in Novo Progresso took notice. It was the same conflict that had subsumed the Kayapo of the Baú reserve.

A welcome ritual performed by the Kayapo.

To reach the reserve’s main village from Novo Progresso, we drove three hours into the jungle by jeep, starting on a muddy track that leads off the BR-163 through cleared ranchlands. Here and there stood towering Brazil-nut trees, which are protected by law—often the only great trees left standing in the burned-out fields. Along the roadside, smoke rose from a fire as it ate into the edge of the forest.

As we drove, the devastation abruptly ended, and the forest grew thick: we were in the reserve. At a split in the muddy track, a handwritten sign indicated that Baú Village was to the left. To the right was the rival community, the one involved in gold mining.

Baú was organized in traditional Kayapo fashion, with communal family dwellings made of wood planks, set around a cleared circle. At the center was an open-sided meeting house with an earthen floor and wooden benches. A few dozen villagers assembled there, and Baú’s chief introduced herself: Panh-Ô, Mydjere’s sister. A strong-bodied woman in her forties, she wore a polka-dotted red dress, a beaded necklace, and a large red cross painted on her face. A man with a red stripe across his cheekbones introduced himself in Portuguese as Kremaiti, Panh-Ô’s husband; he would translate for his wife, who spoke only Kayapo.

Left: Panh-Ô, a Kayapo leader, describes strife between Indigenous people who want to protect the forest and those who want to extract its resources. “We’re in conflict now,” she says. Right: Mydjere Mekrãgnotire, of the Indigenous-rights group Instituto Kabu.

“Most of us here in Baú are against gold mining and logging, but some like it, and that has divided us,” he said. Bolsonaro’s discourse about opening the Indigenous reserves to extraction had seduced some people in his own community, and ultimately this had divided them. A few such Kayapo supported Bolsonaro, though Kremaiti couldn’t understand how. Bolsonaro, he pointed out, had spoken ill of Indigenous people and had even insulted their ancestral chief, Raoni. (In an emblematic gesture, Lula invited Raoni, an elderly man with a resplendent macaw-feather headdress, to the stage during his inauguration.)

Kremaiti said that the men of Baú had established a surveillance team to defend their forest. They had recently discovered prospectors in a remote area of the reservation, and had detained them and confiscated their equipment. “We’re providing an example to the other Indigenous people of Brazil,” he said. “We hope it shows them that our traditional way of life can continue.”

Panh-Ô seemed less confident about the future, noting that a British mining company had recently secured a government license to explore for gold just outside the Baú reserve. They had a Brazilian partner and had recently begun drilling. ”We can hear them, and feel the ground shake,” Panh-Ô said. “They say they are outside of Indigenous land, but I think they’re working inside.”

Even within the reserve, divisions festered over logging and mining. Panh-Ô said that the community had begun to split up in 2019, and there were now seven Kayapo villages in the preserve; of them, only Baú remained opposed to mining. “I’ve tried talking to them, but they want to carry on working with the garimpo,” she said. “I will continue to try to convince them. I want the river to be clean again. We have had some birth defects and problems with deformed infants, and we think it’s because they have contaminated the river water with mercury.” (One other village has since joined Instituto Kabu and agreed to stop mining.)

The nearest garimpo village was just beyond the tree line, a few minutes’ walk away. “The villages that work with the garimpo have stopped talking to us,” Panh-Ô said. “We’re in conflict now.”

Kremaiti’s entire family was in the other village, and his sister was angry at him: “She says I should come back over, build myself a house and work with them. But I want to live here and die here, this is the land I must fight for.”

In Baú Village, the photographer Larissa Zaidan fell into the rhythms of daily life, spending time with a roving gang of young girls, with young men playing soccer, and with mothers and infants. For Zaidan, the camera is an adjunct to the experience. If the moment seems right for a photo, she takes it, but she is primarily there to share the moment.

While the battle carries on around Baú, the community busies itself with chores and pastimes. Women work at minding children, cooking, and washing clothes; young girls help out, or gather to talk and laugh. In the afternoon, many of the Kayapo go to the river to bathe, and teen-age boys play hotly contested games of soccer. In the evening, a generator is switched on, and everyone comes to charge their phones.

Left: In Baú Village, Kayapo traditions sometimes conflict with the influence of settlers, many of whom have arrived only in the past few decades. Right: Rosimeire, a former resident, has left the village because she is dating a settler.

One morning during our visit, Baú’s young men went into the forest to plant yucca seedlings with a visiting environmental-affairs team; the program was intended to teach farming skills to the Kayapo. Other men were policing the rivers and the woods. Just beyond the circle of houses stood a small schoolhouse and clinic, staffed by a pair of state-funded teachers and a nurse. A stream of Kayapo women with infants visited the clinic for treatment. From his stoop, Atoroget, Baú’s pajé, or healer, observed village life in a peaceable-seeming state of semi-retirement, but he lamented that none of the youngsters seemed interested in the traditional arts of healing. “They just want to play ball,” he said. A teen-age nephew who was present protested, “That isn’t true! I want to learn.” Atoroget pretended not to hear him, but he smiled.

Near Kayapo communities that forbid gold mining, the river is clear. Where mining is permitted, the water is tainted by churned-up mud and mercury.

Panh-Ô wanted us to see the state of the river, and so the next morning we boarded a canoe equipped with an outboard engine. As we pulled out into the current, a Kayapo boatman pointed up the shoreline to the rival community, where a massive pile of dirt had been mounded up: tailings from the mines. We passed a sandbar that had been torn up in the search for gold; it looked like a bomb site. The river was red with mud churned up by the mining.

After an hour, another river joined the one we were on, and the boatman showed us that its waters were clear and pure. Not far upriver, a couple of young men from the rival village sat in a canoe in the shade of a tree. They had cast lines into the water, hoping to catch fish where the water was still clean. They stared at us. No one said a thing.

Kayapo children at play.

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