title: Fire and deforestation dynamics in Amazonia (1973-2014).
abstract: Consistent long-term estimates of fire emissions are important to understand the changing role of fire in the global carbon cycle and to assess the relative importance of humans and climate in shaping fire regimes. However, there is limited information on fire emissions from before the satellite era. We show that in the Amazon region, including the Arc of Deforestation and Bolivia, visibility observations derived from weather stations could explain 61% of the variability in satellite-based estimates of bottom-up fire emissions since 1997 and 42% of the variability in satellite-based estimates of total column carbon monoxide concentrations since 2001. This enabled us to reconstruct the fire history of this region since 1973 when visibility information became available. Our estimates indicate that until 1987 relatively few fires occurred in this region and that fire emissions increased rapidly over the 1990s. We found that this pattern agreed reasonably well with forest loss data sets, indicating that although natural fires may occur here, deforestation and degradation were the main cause of fires. Compared to fire emissions estimates based on Food and Agricultural Organization's Global Forest and Resources Assessment data, our estimates were substantially lower up to the 1990s, after which they were more in line. These visibility-based fire emissions data set can help constrain dynamic global vegetation models and atmospheric models with a better representation of the complex fire regime in this region.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Earth and Life Sciences Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Amsterdam Netherlands.
authors.forename: Margreet J E
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-7473-5550
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: van Marle
authors.affiliation: Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics Columbia University New York New York USA; NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies New York New York USA.
authors.forename: Robert D
authors.identifier: 0000-0003-3001-5580
authors.initials: RD
authors.lastname: Field
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Earth and Life Sciences Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Amsterdam Netherlands.
authors.forename: Guido R
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-9042-8630
authors.initials: GR
authors.lastname: van der Werf
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Earth and Life Sciences Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Amsterdam Netherlands.
authors.forename: Ivan A
authors.initials: IA
authors.lastname: Estrada de Wagt
authors.affiliation: Woods Hole Research Center Falmouth Massachusetts USA.
authors.forename: Richard A
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Houghton
authors.affiliation: Department of Exact and Earth Sciences Universidade Federal de Sao Paulo Sao Paulo Brazil.
authors.forename: Luciana V
authors.initials: LV
authors.lastname: Rizzo
authors.affiliation: Physics Institute Universidade de Sao Paulo Sao Paulo Brazil.
authors.forename: Paulo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Artaxo
authors.affiliation: NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies New York New York USA; Center for Climate Systems Research Columbia University New York New York USA.
authors.forename: Kostas
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-5328-819X
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Tsigaridis
keywords: Amazonia; South America; deforestation; historic fire emissions; horizontal visibility; proxy data