These results were derived from a preliminary field survey, household and informant interviews, focus-group discussions and daily monitoring rather than from a continuous, long-term census of forest change. The study combined quantitative and qualitative methods to examine charcoal production and supply around Bonga Town. Researchers randomly selected 108 households for the household survey and assessed charcoal arriving through the town’s five major entry points.

They used descriptive and numerical statistics in R to compare daily and annual charcoal supply, dry-wood extraction, estimated numbers of felled trees, forest area disturbed and emissions among those locations. The design combined physical measurements of supply with information about production practices and tree preferences, although its findings describe one year in one study area and cannot establish long-term trends in demand, forest loss or emissions. Millettia ferruginea, Ehretia cymosa and Vepris dainellii were the three tree species most preferred for charcoal production.

The researchers reported that two of these species are endemic to Ethiopia. The estimated felling of 355,354 trees therefore included pressure on native species, including endemic trees, within the reserve. Its figures for tree loss, disturbed forest area and associated impacts are estimates connected to the monitored charcoal flows and surveyed production areas.

The five entry points differed significantly in daily and annual charcoal supply, the amount of dry wood extracted, the estimated number of trees felled, the forest area disturbed and carbon dioxide emissions. Kaya Kela and Keja Araba had the highest values among the five locations studied. This spatial variation shows that the forest and emissions burden associated with Bonga’s charcoal supply was unevenly distributed across the reserve.

The findings support interventions tailored to the differing conditions of individual areas while the researchers also call for sustainable energy solutions that can protect the ecosystem while supporting rural livelihoods and urban energy demand. The annual estimate of 68,110 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents represents emissions associated with charcoal production and supply, as assessed by the study, rather than a direct measurement of carbon dioxide released at every stage of the chain. The scale of the estimate reflects the large inferred demand for wood: the 27,244 tonnes of dry wood used to make 5,449 tonnes of charcoal was slightly less than five times the mass of charcoal delivered.

Taken together, the measurements document a substantial energy-driven connection between urban charcoal consumption, woodland extraction and greenhouse gas emissions in an ecologically important reserve.

Subject of Research: Environmental impacts of charcoal production and supply in Ethiopia’s Kafa Biosphere Reserve

Article Title: Forest loss and greenhouse gas emissions associated with charcoal production and supply to Bonga town in the Kafa Biosphere Reserve southwestern Ethiopia

Article References: Gebremeskel, T., Kassa, H., Mulatu, K., Chekole, E., Mengistu, A., Taye, G., & Pavlů, V. (2026). Forest loss and greenhouse gas emissions associated with charcoal production and supply to Bonga town in the Kafa Biosphere Reserve southwestern Ethiopia. Discover Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43621-026-04410-3

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43621-026-04410-3

Keywords: charcoal production, Kafa Biosphere Reserve, Bonga Town, forest loss, greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, endemic trees, Ethiopia, wood harvesting, field study, Forest, loss

The pattern in question is a dipole in atmospheric river activity. Atmospheric rivers are long, narrow corridors of concentrated water vapor transport in the atmosphere, capable of moving enormous quantities of moisture across thousands of kilometers. When they make landfall, they typically deliver intense precipitation, and they are famous for their role in flooding on the west coasts of North America and Europe. But their behavior over the South Atlantic, and their influence on the climate of South America, has received far less attention. The new research, led by Shiyue Zhang, with Wenhao Dong and Deliang Chen as co-authors, shows that the year-to-year arrangement of these moisture corridors over the South Atlantic carries a distinctive fingerprint that is strongly tied to what later happens on the ground in the Amazon.

Specifically, the team identified a June–July dipole mode of South Atlantic atmospheric rivers, characterized by suppressed atmospheric river activity in the northern portion of the basin and enhanced activity in the south. This north-south seesaw is not merely a curiosity of atmospheric circulation statistics. When the dipole is in its characteristic phase, the atmospheric rivers that would ordinarily deliver moisture toward the northern Amazon are weakened or displaced, while moisture transport is concentrated farther south. The result is a large-scale atmospheric setup that starves part of the basin of the precipitation it would otherwise receive during the transition into the dry season.

The consequences of that moisture deficit cascade through the land-atmosphere system in ways the researchers document in detail. Reduced precipitation and lower atmospheric humidity during the critical pre-fire-season months leave soils and vegetation drier than usual. With less cloud cover and less water vapor in the air to intercept incoming energy, surface warming intensifies and solar radiation at the ground increases. Drier, hotter conditions in turn elevate vegetation stress, so that trees and understory plants shed moisture and become more flammable. By the time August and September arrive, the landscape has been primed: fuels are desiccated, the canopy microclimate is hotter and drier, and any ignition source, whether from human activity or lightning, is far more likely to spread into a damaging wildfire.

What makes the study remarkable is the strength of the statistical connection. The researchers estimate that wildfire-related forest loss associated with this atmospheric river dipole mode accounts for approximately 26 percent of the observed interannual variability in total forest loss across the Amazon. In a system where forest loss is influenced by everything from drought and El Niño cycles to road building, agricultural expansion, and enforcement of environmental protections, explaining a quarter of the year-to-year variation with a single atmospheric precursor identified two to three months in advance is a substantial contribution. It suggests that the large-scale moisture circulation over the South Atlantic has been an underappreciated driver of one of the most consequential environmental phenomena on Earth.

The predictive implications are even more striking. Existing seasonal fire forecasts for the Amazon have relied heavily on sea surface temperature anomalies, particularly in the tropical Pacific and Atlantic oceans, observed in May and June, along with wildfire activity already recorded in June and July. These predictors capture part of the signal, but they leave considerable uncertainty. When the researchers added the South Atlantic atmospheric river dipole to a prediction framework built on May–June sea surface temperature anomalies and June–July wildfire activity, the model achieved a coefficient of determination, or R², of 0.67 for August–September burned area. In practical terms, that means roughly two-thirds of the variance in the extent of burned area during the peak fire season can be anticipated before the season begins, a level of skill that could meaningfully improve early-warning systems, resource allocation for firefighting, and policy decisions about land use restrictions in vulnerable regions.

The mechanism behind this predictive power highlights the importance of memory in the climate system. Ocean temperatures in May and June reflect slowly evolving conditions that persist for months, and they help shape the atmospheric circulation that positions and energizes atmospheric rivers. The dipole itself, once established in June and July, sets in motion land-surface changes, drying soils, stressed vegetation, elevated temperatures, that do not reset quickly. By August, the die is largely cast. The atmospheric river dipole therefore serves as an intermediate link in a causal chain that runs from ocean conditions through atmospheric moisture transport to land-surface desiccation and finally to fire. Capturing that intermediate link closes a gap that previous forecasting approaches left open.

Perhaps the most sobering element of the study lies in its look toward the future. Using climate model projections, the researchers find that the South Atlantic atmospheric river dipole mode is expected to intensify under continued warming. A stronger dipole would mean more pronounced suppression of moisture delivery to the northern Amazon in some years, deeper pre-season drying, and more severe vegetation stress when fire season arrives. The implication is that the atmospheric configuration that today explains a quarter of the variability in wildfire-related forest loss could become an even more dominant driver in the decades ahead, amplifying wildfire-driven ecological degradation in a biome that many scientists already consider dangerously close to a tipping point.

The stakes of that projection are difficult to overstate. The Amazon stores vast quantities of carbon, regulates regional and global rainfall patterns, and harbors an extraordinary share of Earth’s terrestrial biodiversity. When its forests burn, carbon is released to the atmosphere, biodiversity is lost, and the degraded landscape becomes more flammable and less resilient, creating feedbacks that can push portions of the forest toward a savanna-like state. Wildfire smoke also degrades air quality across South America, with documented consequences for public health. A forecasting tool that reliably flags high-risk fire seasons months in advance does not prevent fires by itself, but it gives governments, indigenous communities, and conservation organizations time to act, whether by prepositioning firefighting capacity, restricting burning permits, or intensifying surveillance of the most vulnerable landscapes.

The study also underscores how much remains to be learned about atmospheric rivers outside the well-studied mid-latitude domains. The South Atlantic dipole joins a growing body of research showing that these moisture corridors play decisive roles in tropical and subtropical climate variability, and that their behavior is sensitive to the same ocean-atmosphere dynamics, such as sea surface temperature patterns and shifts in the subtropical high, that govern drought and flood risk across the hemisphere. As climate change alters the temperature gradients and circulation features that steer atmospheric rivers, understanding their evolving behavior will be essential not only for the Amazon but for water security and disaster preparedness across South America. For now, the message of this research is direct: the sky over the South Atlantic in early winter may already be writing the script for the Amazon’s fire season, and learning to read it could buy the rainforest precious time.

Subject of Research: A South Atlantic atmospheric river dipole as a precursor of Amazon wildfires and its use in seasonal fire prediction

Article Title: A South Atlantic atmospheric river dipole as a key precursor of Amazon wildfires

Article References: Zhang, S., Dong, W., & Chen, D. (2026). A South Atlantic atmospheric river dipole as a key precursor of Amazon wildfires. Nature Communications. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-78572-z

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-026-78572-z

Keywords: atmospheric rivers, Amazon wildfires, South Atlantic, seasonal forecasting, forest loss, land-atmosphere feedback, climate change, fire ecology, vegetation stress, sea surface temperature, Nature Communications, dipole mode

The numbers behind the study’s setting are stark. Colombia extracted roughly 69.3 million tons of coal in 2023, declining to 59.3 million tons in 2024, and La Jagua de Ibirico sits at the heart of that story. The municipality’s population surged by 138 percent between 2005 and 2020 as open-pit operations expanded, even as production in the municipality itself fell from 15.9 million tons in 2012 to 10.9 million tons in 2020. The paradox the researchers set out to examine is precisely this: how can a region plan an energy transition while its economy, institutions, and identities remain welded to the export of a fuel the world is supposed to abandon?

The team’s environmental forensics are unambiguous. Using official forest and hydrographic data from Colombia’s IDEAM and IGAC institutes, delineated against high-resolution Planet satellite imagery in a GIS environment, they found that approximately 315 hectares of forest cover disappeared within the La Jagua mining area between 1990 and 2022, with another 138 hectares lost around the Calenturitas mine. The losses concentrated along riparian corridors, including the Tucuy River, where vegetation once buffered waterways and regulated seasonal flows. Farmers interviewed for the study reported that creeks which once ran year-round now flow only in the rainy season, and that freshwater turtles, native fish, and amphibians have largely vanished from waters they remember as abundant.

Air quality data tell a parallel story of slow-motion harm. Historical records of total suspended particles from the La Palmita station between 2001 and 2010 hovered just below Colombia’s national annual limit of 100 micrograms per cubic meter, while the Boquerón station exceeded that threshold in 2008 and 2009. In 2007, the Ministry of Environment classified sections of the Cesar Mining Corridor as environmental pollution zones, and in 2010 Boquerón was formally declared uninhabitable. Yet as of 2024, a significant proportion of households remained in place, caught in a resettlement process stalled by administrative procedures, budget constraints, and regulatory negotiations. Residents described what researchers call double exposure: simultaneous contact with particulate contamination and institutional neglect. One community leader put it bluntly: We are stuck in the middle, contaminated, forgotten, and silenced.

What distinguishes this study is its refusal to stop at environmental measurement. The researchers deployed a framework known as the plural valuation of nature, aligned with the IPBES Values Assessment, which holds that ecosystems carry economic, social, ecological, cultural, and spiritual meanings simultaneously, and that reducing them to monetary terms erases the very values that make transition pathways legitimate. They surveyed 101 residents, conducted 21 semi-structured interviews across institutional, labor, and community groups, and asked participants to score five economic sectors, mining, agriculture, livestock, tourism, and commerce, across four dimensions: economic contribution, social well-being, ecological sustainability, and cultural compatibility.

The resulting valuation heatmap exposes a contradiction that conventional cost-benefit analysis would miss entirely. Mining scored highest in the economic dimension, with a mean of 3.57 on a five-point scale, reflecting real dependence on jobs, transport, and services. But it scored lowest in the ecological dimension at 2.31, and a paired Wilcoxon signed-rank test across 101 complete pairs confirmed the gap was statistically robust, with a mean difference of 1.27 points and a p-value of 1.79 times ten to the minus nine. Residents associated mining with respiratory illness, unequal benefit distribution, and weakened social trust. Agriculture, by contrast, earned its highest score in the cultural dimension at 4.07, tied to ancestral farming knowledge and food sovereignty, while tourism scored highest on ecological and cultural grounds despite weak current income potential.

Perceptions of decline were strikingly convergent. Soil degradation was cited by 81 percent of respondents, biodiversity loss by 73 percent, water deterioration by 67 percent, food insecurity by 61 percent, and cultural or emotional rupture by 47 percent. Farmers described soil that no longer breathes, where composting and crop rotation have lost their effectiveness and fallow land fails to recover. Women in Boquerón and La Palmita reported heavier domestic burdens hauling water from distant sources. Older residents, particularly women, described the painful erosion of ecological knowledge transmission, from identifying medicinal plants to reading seasonal cues, as planting cycles grew unpredictable and younger generations drifted from the land.

The study’s authors are careful not to romanticize the alternatives. Agriculture in La Jagua de Ibirico is a constrained pathway, limited by the very degradation mining caused: compacted soils, water scarcity, and diminished productivity that will require sustained technical and institutional support to reverse. Tourism is aspirational rather than immediately viable, dependent on air-quality improvement, riparian restoration, infrastructure, and security. The analytical point is subtler and more consequential: plural valuation reveals the direction communities want to travel, even when the road has not yet been built. Ignoring those non-economic values, the researchers argue, reproduces extractivist logic under a green banner, a critique increasingly aimed at transition policies across the Global South where corporate actors have appropriated transition narratives while extraction continues.

Gender emerged as a quietly powerful thread in the findings. Among the 101 respondents, 56 women and 45 men, exploratory chi-square tests found statistically significant associations between sex and both the economic and social valuation of mining. Qualitatively, women were especially vocal on health impacts, water quality, and caregiving burdens, articulating relational and care-based values that shaped deliberation. The authors suggest that future plural valuation exercises in extractive territories adopt gender-sensitive designs to capture these differentiated experiences systematically, rather than leaving them as anecdotal color in participatory workshops.

The deeper lesson radiating from this Colombian coal town is procedural, not merely technical. The Boquerón resettlement saga shows that legal recognition of harm means little without community power over timelines, criteria, and compensation, a textbook case of what environmental justice scholars call procedural justice failure. Residents have responded with community-led air monitoring, participatory mapping of lost territories, and youth-driven documentaries and podcasts documenting environmental injustice. Their articulated demands, compensation for health harms, investment in agroecology and community tourism, legal recognition of territorial practices, and youth training, sketch a transition measured in healing rather than megawatts. As one interviewee told the researchers: The land is wounded, and so are we. Transition means healing both. If the global energy transition is to be just anywhere, this study suggests, it must begin by listening to places like La Jagua de Ibirico, where the invoice for coal was paid long before anyone asked who would collect it.

Subject of Research: Plural valuation of nature and environmental justice in post-extractive transition pathways in a coal-dependent Colombian municipality

Article Title: Plural valuation of nature and environmental justice in post-extractive transitions: The case of La Jagua de Ibirico, Colombia

Article References: Regino Vergara, J., Rincón Ruíz, A., Mejía Brito, A., & Banda Pérez, A. (2026). Plural valuation of nature and environmental justice in post-extractive transitions: The case of La Jagua de Ibirico, Colombia. Heliyon, 12(15), Article e45538. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2026.e45538

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2026.e45538

Keywords: energy transition, coal mining, Colombia, environmental justice, plural valuation, post-extractivism, air quality, forest loss, participatory research, IPBES, just transition, La Jagua de Ibirico