# Fires Drive Long-Term Environmental Degradation in the Amazon Basin
## 5 Conclusions  
Our findings show that environmental degradation caused by fires is related to the occurrence of dry periods in the Amazon Basin. However, it remains unclear how much degradation from burning the forest can withstand before reaching a point of no return. Although this research did not evaluate the degradation caused by anthropogenic factors such as changes in land use and occupation, fires are directly related to C emissions. Countries that contain some of the Amazon Basin in their territory, especially Brazil, need to assess the cost-benefit ratio of allowing their forested areas to be continuously deforested and burned to open up new agricultural areas [6; 7; 8]. Numerical simulations show that the more agriculture expands into the forest, the less productive it will become [105; 106] and excessive GHG emissions can cause changes in atmospheric composition that will cause a decline in rainfall in the eastern Amazon [102; 105; 106; 107; 108; 109; 110]. A decline in rainfall will compromise the well-being of millions of people living in southern and southeastern Brazil [38] who depend on this rainfall to produce food and energy. **Supplementary Materials:** The following are available online at [[https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/rs14020338/s1](https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/rs14020338/s1)]([https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/rs14020338/s1](https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/rs14020338/s1)), Table S1: Annual values of the variables investigated in the Amazon basin calculated from orbital products, highlighted in red for the years of occurrence of El Nino. Data related to the annual average of all pixels for the whole basin for the variable rainfall (mm year\({}^{-1}\)) and Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), performing the sum of the values every 12 months. The variables Gross Primary Productivity (GPP, kg C m\({}^{-2}\) year\({}^{-1}\)) and Fire Foci (counts) were added for the basin in each year studied; while the variable Emissions (Tg C year\({}^{-1}\)) was added each year for the areas where fires occurred within the Amazon Basin; Table S2: Size of areas, number of polygons (NP), and relative percentage of each country with fires within the Amazon Basin; Table S3: Size of areas, number of polygons (NP), and relative percentage with fires within indigenous lands (ILs) that are in the countries inserted in Amazon Basin; Table S4: Size of areas, number of polygons (NP), and relative percentage with fires within conservation units (CU's) that are in the countries inserted in Amazon Basin; Table S5: Multiple regression models for the emissions as a function of the fire foci, rainfall, SPI, and gross primary production (GPP). *: significant by F-test; Figure S1: Measurement of annual rainfall (mm year\({}^{-1}\)) of the study area between the years 2001 and 2019; Figure S2: Pearson-cluster correlation (red dots indicate that there were El Nino events in the year (between 2010 and 2015). Dark red dots indicate that there were sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies in the north tropical Atlantic (2005); Figure S3: Network Pearson correlation between the variables. Positive correlations were linked by green dashes, while negative correlations were linked by red dashes. The thickness of the trace is proportional to the magnitude of the correlation; Figure S4: Time series (2001-2019) of the anomaly variation between the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) calculated from long-time rainfall and the sum of Gross Primary Production (GPP) values for the Amazon basin, indicating its standard deviation and outliers (red dots). **Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, C.A.d.S.J., M.L., P.E.T. and J.F.d.O.-J. ; methodology, C.A.d.S.J., P.E.T., F.S.R. and L.P.R.T. ; formal analysis, B.M.F., D.A., V.D. and V.M.T. ; investigation, C.A.d.S.J., W.B., T.L., A.K., T.D.P., F.A.M. and I.M.d.S.L. ; data curation, C.A.d.S.J., F.S.R. and P.E.T., writing--original draft preparation, C.A.d.S.J., M.L., P.E.T. and J.F.d.O.-J. ; writing--review and editing, L.P.R.T., B.M.F., D.A., V.D. and V.M.T.