'The Amazon is a carbon sink, which slows the rate of carbon dioxide build up in the atmosphere, and thus climate warming,' said James Randerson from the University of California, Irvine.
, there have been around 100,000 wildfires in the entirety of the country so far this year—a 45 percent increase on the same period last year. More than half of these fires have occurred in the Amazon biome—the highest number in this region since 2010.
"The Amazon is a carbon sink, which slows the rate of carbon dioxide build up in the atmosphere, and thus climate warming," James Randerson from the University of California, Irvine, told"Deforestation and fire-driven forest degradation affect the carbon cycle in two ways. First, there is a direct release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in the conversion process. Second, the loss of forest reduces the ability of the forest as a whole to absorb carbon.
"The Amazon is a big carbon sink but its ability to scrub carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is declining," she said."This will contribute to climate chaos, turning tropical forests from a global carbon sink to a global carbon source is perhaps the most important consequence of destroying the Amazon."
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