FAPESP PHD project - Grant number: 22/04893-9
Quantification of emissions from forest fires in the Amazon
The project
In the tropics, land use and land cover change (LULCC) is one of the main sources of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. Brazil, for example, is the 6th largest GHG emitter in the world and about 40% of these emissions are derived from LULCC. Most of these emissions come from deforestation and degradation of tropical rainforests in the Amazon Basin, which stores around 100 Pg of carbon in biomass and necromass. Assessments of CO2 emissions from these tropical forests are primarily based on annual satellite deforestation assessments, which have been ongoing since the 1980s. Currently, annual estimates of CO2 emissions and removals by LULCC in Brazil are estimated according to the IPCC guidelines, none of which include fire or other emissions from degradation to estimate the carbon balance. Therefore, this Post-Doctoral (PD) fellowship proposal is intended to support the activities of Working Group 2 of the RCGI project (GT2), led by Dr. Aragão, entitled "Sources, sinks, and processes for controlling greenhouse gas emissions in the Amazon", part of the joint project Shell-FAPESP Research Call. This PD fellowship will focus on the broader objective of GT2, which aims to "Build a forest fire emission model and quantify its relative contribution to gross deforestation and other degradation processes", which represents the most up-to-date and complete regional assessment of emissions of carbon related to forest fires in the Amazon. The PD fellow will be responsible for systematically quantifying the annual carbon emissions from forests affected by fires, combining field monitoring, time series of satellite images (GT1), and an unprecedented model of forest emissions.
Postdoc
Dr Aline Pontes Lopes
Peer-reviewed scientific articles
2022
