In the last 37 years, Peru has lost 49.9% of the extension of its glaciers and 3.9% of its natural vegetation due to the effects of climate change It’s from carbon black caused by the fires in amazonsays a report.
The first data collection from MapBiomas Peru indicated that mining areas in that country increased from 3000 hectares in 1985 to 119,000 in 2021, which means a multiplication by 39.6.
This organization also warned that the “accelerated dynamics” of the changes that occurred in the analyzed period generated a loss of 3.9% of its natural vegetation and 49.9% of its glaciers.
This figure “represents a serious impact on the country’s ecosystems, on its biodiversityin its ecosystem services, in its functionality and connectivity”, added MapBiomas Peru in the report.
“Glaciers feed the sources of the country’s great rivers, supplying millions of people with water,” he recalled.
According to the study, another ecosystem heavily impacted by human activities is the seasonally dry forests in the north of the country, which, according to the researchers, is an area that has been little studied and with many gaps in information.
“This coverage has changed drastically and what worries us most is that we are losing it”, pointed out Renzo Piana, executive director of one of the entities leading this initiative, the Instituto do Bem Comum (IBC).
Piana stressed that “the losses have been enormous, with no prospect of reversing” the trend.
And he added that “the data trigger alarms and give a sense of urgency to the need for decisive and forceful action for these natural covers in Peru”, and that behind these numbers is the impact on the food security of local populations.
Second the studyin 1985, 7.2% of the national territory (about 9.3 million hectares) had anthropic areas such as pastures, crops, mining or urban areas, while in 2021 these areas reached 10.4% of the territory (about 13 .5 million hectares).
The Amazon was the region that showed the greatest changes in the last 37 years, with a total loss of 2.6 million hectares (3.6%) of its natural vegetation.
The study, coordinated by the IBC, the MapBiomas Network and the RAISG (Amazon Network of Georeferenced Socio-Environmental Information), was presented this Friday in Lima.
The IBC researcher and coordinator of MapBiomas Peru, Sandra Ríos, stressed that “this first collection makes it possible to fill a large gap of information in regions outside the Amazon area of the country”.
“New categories of analysis were added to those that the IBC had been dealing with for mapping the natural coverage of the Amazon basin. The initiative analyzes forest formations of all types, cerrados, manuals, glaciers, agricultural areas, urban areas and mining areas “, he underlined.