In Roraima alone, over 10,000 km 2 of intact forests burned, and that was probably just a fraction of the total area affected by forest fires in Brazil. 16,17 Figure 3. Vicious feedback cycle between forest understory fire, selective logging, and forest flammability. Both understory fire and logging open the canopy and increase the fuel load on the forest floor, increasing forest vulnerability to fire. The immediate environmental impacts of forest fires are only part of the story.
Forest fires increase the likelihood of future forest fires.
18 Fire begets fire. This tree mortality increases considerably the likelihood of a second fire. Eventually, the forest stops being a forest, as the successive fires allow the invasion of the understory by grasses, making the area even more flammable. In sum, the expansion of the road network, if not implemented within the context of effective policies for governing land use activities and natural resource conservation, creates an incentive for logging, which in turn increases the susceptibility of the forest to fire. Furthermore, severe drought places a very large area of Amazonian forests under increased fire risk.