A farmer in West Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo) uses fire to clear rainforest for planting. As climate change causes many areas to warm and dry, fires may become more frequent and more difficult to control, having serious impacts on rainforest species.
Conservation and international aid groups may be on the wrong course to address the havoc wreaked on tropical rainforests by climate change, according to a commentary appearing on Dec. 2. "Most of the world's terrestrial biodiversity is contained in tropical rainforests, and climate change is looming ever larger as one of the major threats to these ecosystems, but how humans deal with climate change may be even more important," said Penn State Professor of Biology Eric Post , one of the letter's authors. Post explained that rising temperatures and altered precipitation are important concerns; however, how humans respond to these altered conditions may be exacerbating an already bad situation. Post's co-author, University of Montana ecologist Jedediah Brodie, formerly a Smith Conservation fellow at Penn State, commented that many tropical trees are reasonably resistant to temperature increases and even drought, but if the warming up and drying out of forests causes people to set more fires, trees could be completely unprepared. "If climate change leads to people starting more fires or doing more logging, those activities could be much more harmful to tropical biodiversity than just the simple rise in temperature," Brodie said. The authors also explained that warming and drying conditions in parts of South America and Southeast Asia make it much easier for people to use fires to clear forests for agriculture.
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