South American Forest Fires - The lie within a lie.

[Montegriffo]

It isn't virgin forest being burned. In most cases the logging companies have already taken all the valuable trees out and what is left is being cleared so the land can be used as pasture or fodder crops such as soya.
The biggest problem is that the land only stays fertile for a couple of years and you have to move on. The depleted soil is now open to the sun and heats up which dries it out and makes it vulnerable to erosion.
Once the soil is gone the forests aren't ever coming back.

[Fife]

Plants: Our least sustainable resource

:goteam: :drunk: :xx:

[The Conservative]

[Speaker to Animals]

It isn't virgin forest being burned. In most cases the logging companies have already taken all the valuable trees out and what is left is being cleared so the land can be used as pasture or fodder crops such as soya.
The biggest problem is that the land only stays fertile for a couple of years and you have to move on. The depleted soil is now open to the sun and heats up which dries it out and makes it vulnerable to erosion.
Once the soil is gone the forests aren't ever coming back.

The soil there is not fertile for most food crops, but the jungle I think would certainly come back.

The reason they have to keep burning is to enrich the soil. At least, that is my understanding. The ancient civilization that lived in the Amazon knew how to manufacture soil from biochar that never goes bad. People are still farming on that soil in the middle of the Amazon. Not sure if anybody figured out how to replicate that well and if it is economical.

The bigger problem than the soil is just slashing huge swaths of rainforest in the first place. I think the rainforest would come back pretty fast if people left those fields alone.

[Montegriffo]

Secondary forest can return in as little as 65 years but primary rainforest could take up to 4000 years. The soil is the most precious resource and it takes a very long time to replace itself.

[Speaker to Animals]

Secondary forest can return in as little as 65 years but primary rainforest could take up to 4000 years. The soil is the most precious resource and it takes a very long time to replace itself.

That's a good point, but I think there is something uniquely shitty about the Amazon soil. I suspect there is nothing those farmers can do to make that shit worse than it was before they slashed and burned.

One of the weirdest things about the Amazon is that it's kind of a food desert.

[Montegriffo]

The soil is very shallow, most of the nutrients are in the plants not the soil. This is the problem with removing the trees. A large mahogany tree 150 feet tall contains an enormous amount of nutrients which once removed will take a very long time to replace.
Same with fodder crops, the nutrients are removed and used to grow cattle rather than generating forest growth.
People need to cut back on their consumption of cheap meat.

[Montegriffo]

The reason they have to keep burning is to enrich the soil. At least, that is my understanding. The ancient civilization that lived in the Amazon knew how to manufacture soil from biochar that never goes bad. People are still farming on that soil in the middle of the Amazon. Not sure if anybody figured out how to replicate that well and if it is economical.

Thing is, those tribes do slash and burn but it's not to enrich the soil.
They use the land for a couple of years and then repeat the process on the adjoining bit of forest. They just keep going in a straight line and never go back. On a small scale it works, there's always a new bit of forest to move on to and the clearing behind you has as long as it needs to recover. On a large scale, you eventually run out of forest and then you run out of soil. The end game is a desert.

[Speaker to Animals]

The reason they have to keep burning is to enrich the soil. At least, that is my understanding. The ancient civilization that lived in the Amazon knew how to manufacture soil from biochar that never goes bad. People are still farming on that soil in the middle of the Amazon. Not sure if anybody figured out how to replicate that well and if it is economical.

Thing is, those tribes do slash and burn but it's not to enrich the soil.
They use the land for a couple of years and then repeat the process on the adjoining bit of forest. They just keep going in a straight line and never go back. On a small scale it works, there's always a new bit of forest to move on to and the clearing behind you has as long as it needs to recover. On a large scale, you eventually run out of forest and then you run out of soil. The end game is a desert.

Check this out:


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta

[Montegriffo]

The reason they have to keep burning is to enrich the soil. At least, that is my understanding. The ancient civilization that lived in the Amazon knew how to manufacture soil from biochar that never goes bad. People are still farming on that soil in the middle of the Amazon. Not sure if anybody figured out how to replicate that well and if it is economical.

Thing is, those tribes do slash and burn but it's not to enrich the soil.
They use the land for a couple of years and then repeat the process on the adjoining bit of forest. They just keep going in a straight line and never go back. On a small scale it works, there's always a new bit of forest to move on to and the clearing behind you has as long as it needs to recover. On a large scale, you eventually run out of forest and then you run out of soil. The end game is a desert.

Check this out:


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta

Hmm. That's interesting. Thanks for posting.
Seems like many solutions to today's problems may lie in the rainforests. I heard on the radio today that around 25% of medicines and up to 70 % of cancer medicines were originally found in tropical rainforests.

The type of burning going on today is not producing low-temperature, low oxygen charcoal though. The article suggests that high temp, high oxygen burning may actually deplete the soil rather than replenish it.

Well worth more study into it, claims of adding 1cm of soil per year is remarkable if true.

I wonder if the pottery is from ancient charcoal burning techniques. Charcoal made for use in smelting was produced by burning wood sealed in clay burners (clay-lined holes in the ground with small air vents) in order to control the amount of oxygen as it slowly smouldered.