> In the past 40 years, Amazônia has lost more than 13% of its vegetation cover.

This is loss of original forest cover, replaced by non-native vegetation: pasture, agriculture & tree plantations. 13% is about the amount of vegetation coverage domesticated in Amazonia over 40 years. It has been converted from wilderness into a renewable, denser source of ingredients for food, clothing and shelter.

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culi an hour ago | parent | next [-]

The Amazon rainforest was extensively modified by pre-Columbian indigenous societies. Some anthropologists have even called it a "manufactured landscape". Modern LiDAR mapping has revealed thousands of large geometric ditches, reservoirs, causeways, mounds, and earthen infrastructure.[0][1] Up to 10% of soils are highly fertile man-made terra preta soils and trees like cocoa, acai, and brazilnut show an unnatural "hyperdominance" distribution due to ancient orchards. Many plants throughout show some degree of domestication[2][3]

And some have even proposed a possible human role in the transition of parts of the Amazon from grassland to rainforest about 10k years ago[4]

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article/282/1812/201...

You don't achieve a population of 3M people without such extensive landscape modification.

[0] https://www.zmescience.com/science/archaeology/archaeologist...

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02773...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/08/humans-living-...

[3] https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/environmental-archaeolo...

[4] https://www.discovermagazine.com/10-800-years-ago-early-huma...

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aaron425 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Can you defend your statement and cite how renewable this domesticated area is? Aren’t most areas deforested for cattle farming (legendarily inefficient) and soy plantations (monoculture)?

Source: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2025.107810

	▲	culi an hour ago \| parent [-]
		The funny/sad thing about the Amazon soil is its incredibly poor nutritionally. Because there's so much rain, many minerals and nutrients get washed out. In fact, poor soils often result in such high biodiversity.[0] Which means when they slash and burn to grow soy, they only really have a year or 2 where the soil can support that. Afterwards all its good for is cattle (if that). But its so plentiful and demand is so high for beef and soy that we keep doing this [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWVATekt4ZA

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GroksBarnacles an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

You know "wilderness" serves functions too, right?