Often called Earth’s green lungs, tropical forests pull down massive amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, release oxygen and help regulate the global climate. While the threat of large-scale deforestation is well known, new findings reveal a surprising culprit – the clearance of small areas of forest accounts for more than half of all carbon losses across the Tropics.
The satellite images here, acquired by the NASA’s Landsat-5 on 10 July 1995 (left) and the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission on 3 August 2020 (right), show how small clearings in tropical forests have expanded in Peru’s Loreto region.
Read full story: Tiny patches of deforestation drive tropical carbon loss