Translating Fire Impacts in Southwestern Amazonia into Economic Costs

Between 1998 and 2017, climate-related disasters represented 91% of all occurrences worldwide, causing approximately US$ 2.245 billion of direct economic losses. In the Amazon region, fire is used as a widely spread technique for land clearing, agricultural management, hunting, and religious rituals. However, over the past 20 years, severe droughts caused a major amplification of fire occurrences, leading to several socioeconomic and environmental impacts. Particularly in Acre state, located in the southwestern Brazilian Amazon, the occurrence of extensive fires, associated with extreme climatic events, has been reported since 2005. However, fire dynamics, land tenure relationships, and associated impacts are poorly quantified. In this study, we aim to investigate the following: (1) The spatiotemporal variability of fire dynamics during anomalously dry and regular climate conditions; (2) the attribution of fire occurrence and land tenure relationship, and (3) the environmental, social, and economic impacts caused by fires and its consequences for Acre’s economy. We analyzed information on the spatial patterns of fire, its direct impacts on land use and land cover, carbon stocks, CO2 emissions, the indirect impact on human illness, and finally the costs of these impacts from 2008 to 2012. During the studied period, burned areas were concentrated around the major cities and roads, forming polygons up to 0.6 km2. However, in 2010, an extremely dry year, fires spread to remote areas, impacting protected private areas and sustainable-use conservation areas. In 2010, the total area affected by forest fires was approximately 16 times greater than in meteorologically normal years. The total economic loss estimated in 2010 was around US$ 243.36 ± 85.05 million and for the entire period, US$ 307.46 ± 85.41 million. These values represent 7.03 ± 2.45% and 9.07 ± 2.46% of Acre’s gross domestic product (GDP), respectively.

[1]  D. Ward,et al.  Fire in the Brazilian Amazon 2. Biomass, nutrient pools and losses in cattle pastures , 1998, Oecologia.

[2]  Boom-bust patterns in the Brazilian Amazon , 2015 .

[3]  Y. Shimabukuro,et al.  The Incidence of Fire in Amazonian Forests with Implications for REDD , 2010, Science.

[4]  Jill L. Caviglia-Harris,et al.  Busting the BoomBust Pattern of Development in the Brazilian Amazon , 2016 .

[5]  A. Fernandes,et al.  SOIL ATTRIBUTES AFTER THE CONVERSION FROM FOREST TO PASTURE IN AMAZON , 2013 .

[6]  Mark G. Stewart,et al.  Decision-making in a changing climate , 2016 .

[7]  Eric Armijo,et al.  Slowing Amazon deforestation through public policy and interventions in beef and soy supply chains , 2014, Science.

[8]  L. Aragão,et al.  Land use and land cover changes determine the spatial relationship between fire and deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon , 2012 .

[9]  D. Posey Indigenous management of tropical forest ecosystems: the case of the Kayapó indians of the Brazilian Amazon , 1985, Agroforestry Systems.

[10]  Y. Shimabukuro,et al.  Fraction images derived from Terra Modis data for mapping burnt areas in Brazilian Amazonia , 2009 .

[11]  Cesar Guerreiro Diniz,et al.  High spatial resolution land use and land cover mapping of the Brazilian Legal Amazon in 2008 using Landsat-5/TM and MODIS data , 2016 .

[12]  I. Brown,et al.  Dynamics of forest fires in the southwestern Amazon , 2018, Forest Ecology and Management.

[13]  J. Randerson,et al.  A human-driven decline in global burned area , 2017, Science.

[14]  R. Betts,et al.  Assessing the Influence of Climate Extremes on Ecosystems and Human Health in Southwestern Amazon Supported by the PULSE-Brazil Platform , 2016 .

[15]  R. Houghton,et al.  Tropical forests are a net carbon source based on aboveground measurements of gain and loss , 2017, Science.

[16]  D. Arvor,et al.  Transition in environmental governance in the Brazilian Amazon: emergence of a new pattern of socio-economic development and deforestation , 2016 .

[17]  Yosio Edemir Shimabukuro,et al.  The least-squares mixing models to generate fraction images derived from remote sensing multispectral data , 1991, IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote. Sens..

[18]  Egidio Arai,et al.  Development of a Point-based Method for Map Validation and Confidence Interval Estimation: A Case Study of Burned Areas in Amazonia , 2017 .

[19]  T. Nakaya,et al.  Drought impacts on children's respiratory health in the Brazilian Amazon , 2014, Scientific Reports.

[20]  Eduardo S Brondízio,et al.  Poverty and Inequality in the Rural Brazilian Amazon: A Multidimensional Approach , 2012, Human ecology: an interdisciplinary journal.

[21]  F. Putz,et al.  Estimating state-wide biomass carbon stocks for a REDD plan in Acre, Brazil , 2011 .

[22]  J. E. Lima,et al.  Avaliação econômica da poluição do ar na Amazônia Ocidental: um estudo de caso do Estado do Acre , 2006 .

[23]  V. Pivello The Use of Fire in the Cerrado and Amazonian Rainforests of Brazil: Past and Present , 2011 .

[24]  R. DeFries,et al.  Understorey fire frequency and the fate of burned forests in southern Amazonia , 2013, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[25]  R. Dickinson,et al.  Rainfall and its seasonality over the Amazon in the 21st century as assessed by the coupled models for the IPCC AR4 , 2006 .

[26]  Milton Silva Junior,et al.  PERFIL DOS INCÊNDIOS FLORESTAIS EM UNIDADES DE CONSERVAÇÃO BRASILEIRAS NO PERÍODO DE 2008 À 2012 , 2017 .

[27]  A. Berardi,et al.  Community owned solutions for fire management in tropical ecosystems: case studies from Indigenous communities of South America , 2016, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[28]  M. Bush,et al.  Amazonian paleoecological histories : one hill , three watersheds , 2022 .

[29]  O. Phillips,et al.  21st Century drought-related fires counteract the decline of Amazon deforestation carbon emissions , 2018, Nature Communications.

[30]  Ane Alencar,et al.  The economic cost of the use of fire in the Amazon , 2004 .

[31]  G. Asner,et al.  Actor-specific contributions to the deforestation slowdown in the Brazilian Amazon , 2014, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[32]  Cendi Ribas Berni,et al.  As contribuições do Manejo Integrado do Fogo para o controle dos incêndios florestais nas Terras Indígenas do Brasil , 2016 .

[33]  J. Stape,et al.  Köppen's climate classification map for Brazil , 2013 .

[34]  E. Davidson,et al.  Abrupt increases in Amazonian tree mortality due to drought–fire interactions , 2014, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[35]  J. Marengo,et al.  Extreme seasonal droughts and floods in Amazonia: causes, trends and impacts , 2015 .

[36]  L. Aragão,et al.  Deforestation-Induced Fragmentation Increases Forest Fire Occurrence in Central Brazilian Amazonia , 2018, Forests.

[37]  Jill L. Caviglia-Harris,et al.  Agricultural development and the industry life cycle on the Brazilian frontier , 2013, Environment and Development Economics.

[38]  M. Silman,et al.  Holocene fire and occupation in Amazonia: records from two lake districts , 2007, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[39]  I. Brown,et al.  Re-thinking socio-economic impact assessments of disasters: The 2015 flood in Rio Branco, Brazilian Amazon , 2018, International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction.

[40]  Cristina Santín,et al.  Fire effects on soils: the human dimension , 2016, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[41]  N. L. Costa,et al.  Aspectos econômicos da recuperação de pastagens na Amazônia Brasileira. , 2010 .

[42]  Estudo da variabilidade espacial e temporal da profundidade óptica do aerossol obtida com o MODIS sobre a região amazônica , 2013 .

[43]  O. Phillips,et al.  The 2010 Amazon Drought , 2011, Science.

[44]  Sheila M. Olmstead,et al.  The Economic Valuation of Environmental Amenities and Disamenities: Methods and Applications , 2009 .

[45]  J. Marengo,et al.  The drought of 2010 in the context of historical droughts in the Amazon region , 2011 .

[46]  Y. Shimabukuro,et al.  Disentangling the contribution of multiple land covers to fire‐mediated carbon emissions in Amazonia during the 2010 drought , 2015, Global biogeochemical cycles.

[47]  M. Leonel O uso do fogo: o manejo indígena e a piromania da monocultura , 2000 .

[48]  Claudio de Sassi,et al.  REDD+ on the ground: A case book of subnational initiatives across the globe , 2014 .

[49]  Y. Shimabukuro,et al.  Spatial patterns and fire response of recent Amazonian droughts , 2007 .

[50]  I. Brown,et al.  Monitoring fires in southwestern Amazonia Rain Forests , 2006 .

[51]  Eduardo S Brondízio,et al.  The economics of ecosystem services: from local analysis to national policies , 2013 .

[52]  B. Peterson,et al.  LANDFIRE 2010 - updated data to support wildfire and ecological management , 2013 .

[53]  B. Soares-Filho,et al.  Cracking Brazil's Forest Code , 2014, Science.

[54]  L. Anderson,et al.  Detecção de cicatrizes de áreas queimadas baseada no modelo linear de mistura espectral e imagens índice de vegetação utilizando dados multitemporais do sensor MODIS/TERRA no estado do Mato Grosso, Amazônia brasileira , 2005 .