AMAZON BURNING: On an Amazon plantation the size of Cape Cod, a Massachusetts forest ecologist and his team are setting the
rain forest on fire. Researchers measure the height and width of the flames and later determine how far into the forest the fire has travelled. The big surprise in initial burns said the lead researcher, Daniel Nepstad of the Woods Hole Research Centre in Falmouth, Massachusetts, is 'that quite a lot of big tarees survive. That is good news: This is a tough forest." The bad news is that fire-promoting droughts have become increasingly common in the Amazon, taking a terrible toll on rainforest - and eventually , Mr.Nepstad and many other
scientists believe, on the climate of the rest of the world. Whenever a taree dies and decays, its carbon is taken up by microbes and other organisms in the soil and eventually released as the green house gas carbon dioxde. During last year's harshest Amazon dry season in 40 years, drought and accidental fires killed half a billion metric tonnes of trees in Brazil, according to conservative estimates. Brazil is one of the world's 10 worst carbon polluters. In the United States, China and other countries, fossil fuels are the major source of emissions, but 70 per cent of Brazil's greenhouse gases come from clear cutting and forest fires, according to thje Amazon Institute for Environmental Research. Mr.Nepstad warns "people tend to focus on glaciers and the poles as early warning signs of global warming, but
tropical rainforests are also showing signs. The process is underway , and it is alarming". Historical records suggest that the big fires swept the Amazon every several centuries in the past; now they occur every couple of decades. The Amazon is a "giant airconditioner." in Mr.Nepstad's words, that evaporates water and cools the region. Losing the Amazon rainforest entirely could reduce rainfall in regions as far away as the central U.S. farm belt, according to Climatologist Mr.Roni Avissar, (of Duke University). Scientists calculate that in an average year, up to one fourth of carbon emissions that contribute to rising global temperatures come not from cares and factories but from tropical deforestation and fires. With an estimated 430 billion metraic tonnes of carbon stored in tropical rainforests protecting them could go a long way toward meeting the world's carbon-reduction targets, say scientists involved in long-term studies in the Amazon. Conversely, if current rates of Amazon deforestation continue unabated, some 33 billion metaraic tonnes of carbon will be released into the atmosphere from dead trees by 2050. With a quarater of the Brazilian Amazon in private hands Ranch owners must be given incentives to leave their unproductive land as forest. This will ensure saving of the forest - rain forest to a great extend not only for the good of Brazil but also other countries and the earth in general.