Foreste che infiammano il clima

The chemical mechanisms that occur during a forest fire event generate high quantity of particulate matter, greenhouse gases and a lot of other compounds which affect atmospheric dynamics, biogeochemical cycles of the elements and create persistent haze of unbreathable air. Since the Neolithic, fires were used by men for land clearance. First farmers and ranchers needed to grow cereals and to graze cattle, and fire as the fastest way to obtain free lands for these purposes. Nowadays, fire still remains the most used and cheapest instrument to get new lands ready for plantations. The worst threat from fires seems to be happening in Indonesia, where companies are uncontrollably burning a lot of forests, both legally and illegally, and selling the burned fields to palm oil firms, in a big fire-business at the expenses of the environmental quality. Local and global climate changes, air pollution, worsening human health and biodiversity loss are the outcomes of this increasingly intense biomass-burning process.