Brazil’s Amazon rainforest has already reached a new deforestation record this year

he portion of Amazon rainforest impacted by deforestation in the first three months of 2022 was the highest ever recorded, according to a new report by Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE).

According to the INPE report, published Friday, 941.34 square kilometers (363 square miles) of forest were cleared between January and March this year. That’s the largest amount recorded since the institute began monitoring deforestation rates in 2016. The area cleared is nearly the size of Dallas, Texas.

Researchers observed a 64% increase from the same time period last year, when 573.29 square kilometers (221 square miles) were cleared…READ ON

Study Reveals An Alarming Link Between Depression And Disasters

IN RECENT YEARS, the world has faced an onslaught of increasingly apocalyptic extreme weather events, which have become more frequent due to the climate crisis.

Naturally, we might expect these disastrous events to have some effect on our mental health, but relatively few studies have comprehensively assessed the links between disasters and mental health. But a new report could fill in important gaps in the data on mental health and climate change.

Published Wednesday in the journal PLOS Climate, the study examines the connection between “community disasters” and depression in South Africa. The findings speak to an urgent need to devote greater attention — and resources — to the physical and mental health of vulnerable communities in the wake of disasters like extreme weather events.

“Our investigation in South Africa provides large-scale empirical evidence on the likelihood of depression among individuals living in a community affected by a disaster,” Andrew Tomita, lead author on the study and senior lecturer at the School of Nursing and Public Health at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, tells Inverse…READ ON