The Pantanal (World's Largest Tropical Wetland)

Heavy rains fill the vast Pantanal Basin each year, creating a vast flooding landscape. During the hottest season, when the region receives the most rainfall, wetlands and the Pantanal Basin can fill up to 80% of the water. In contrast, during the dry season, most of the water in the basin drains into the Paraguay River. The Paraguay River, which is the main source of water for the wetlands, flowing directly through the Pantanal, has seen the greatest changes in water levels on its surrounding banks and shores.

During the rainy season, when these surrounding areas are also flooded, the Pantanal becomes so large that it becomes the largest wetland in history. The Pantanal is the world's largest freshwater wetland, a seasonal floodplain fed by tributaries of the Paraguay River. A national park and part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Pantanal is the largest tropical wetland in the world, covering more than 70,000 square miles, an area the size of Washington state in the idyllic heart of South America.

Brazil can claim most of the territory, but since nature does not respect political boundaries, the Pantanal moves to neighbor Paraguay and Bolivia. While it is often covered by the Amazon rainforest to the north, the Pantanal quietly boasts the continent's highest concentration of wildlife. According to the WWF (known as WWF in the United States and Canada), the Pantanal boasts the greatest concentration of wildlife in South America, greater than its more famous northern neighbor, the Amazon.

This year, nearly a quarter of Brazil's vast wetlands, the Pantanal, one of the most biodiverse places on Earth, has been burned by fires fueled by climate change. A recently burned section of Encontro das Aguas Park in the Pantanal Wetlands was photographed on September 12, 2020. Less rainfall in the upper Paraguay River, which supplies nutrients and water to the Pantanal, means that seasonally submerged wetlands dried up earlier than expected. The fire season in the Pantanal region usually peaks in September, meaning the situation could worsen, posing a serious threat to the unique biodiversity of wetlands and populations already affected by COVID-19.

The Pantanal covers an area of 42 million acres spread across southwestern Brazil, Bolivia, and Paraguay. It is famous for its plants and animals, which in part helps it to be recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Pantanal is home to approximately 4,700 different plants and animals, including jaguars, caimans, giant anteaters, capybaras, hyacinth macaws (the world's largest parrot), and hundreds of fish species. Many faunas thrive in the Pantanal's mosaic landscape, including flooded areas, grasslands, lakes, and forests.

The Pantanal, often visited by ecotourists, is the world's largest tropical wetland, home to indigenous peoples and rare or endangered species such as jaguars and giant armadillos. The Pantanal is a wetland biome, covering approximately 19 million hectares (47 million acres)—compared to Florida in the United States—composed of grasslands, rivers, and islands. The Pantanal wetlands cover an area of about 200,000 square kilometers, account for about 3% of the world's wetlands, and play an important role in the carbon cycle. When these carbon-rich ecosystems burn, large amounts of heat-absorbing gas will be released into the atmosphere, leading to the greenhouse effect.

As of November 2020, Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (INPE) has detected more than 21,200 fires in the Pantanal Biome, and already a 69% increase from the 2005 annual record, when INPE recorded approximately 12,500 fires. According to Tatiana Polastri and David Biller of the Associated Press, Brazil's Pantanal has recorded more than 17,000 fires to date, already exceeding the annual rate for each recorded year that goes back to 1998, and This year the annual average has tripled. Fires are estimated to have burned more than 700,000 hectares (1.7 million acres) in the Pantanal region between January and August this year, the second-largest in a decade, according to the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. (UFRJ).

Their analysis showed that at least 22% of the Pantanal region in Brazil has been burned since January, with the worst fires occurring in August and September and two months in a row. Natural fires play a role in the Pantanal in addition to the fires of cattle ranchers. But in the Pantanal, scientists say, the fire is also burning underground, fed by dry vegetation in the wetlands.

The fire is worse than any other in the memory of the Gusto people, an indigenous population whose ancestors lived in the Pantanal for thousands of years. Scientists studying the ecosystem fear that the fires are so violent that they could change the Pantanal forever, according to nature. Scientists fear violent fires will profoundly alter the Pantanal's already fragile ecosystem and that research programs to study the region's ecology and biodiversity will never recover. Unlike the surrounding Amazon rainforest, Pantanal vegetation has evolved to coexist with fire – many plant species require the heat of the fire to germinate.

Some experts say more than 700,000 hectares (1.7 million acres) of the Pantanal have already burned down this year, and this year's fire could be as devastating as last year if the situation is not closely monitored and ongoing. The fire will be localized. Others are less concerned, given that the fire is part of a natural ecological process in the Pantanal and that this year's fires are not as dangerous and serious as previous years. One notable difference between 2020 and 2021 is that firefighting efforts have intensified this year, with government agencies, NGOs, and communities working together to protect the Pantanal.

The unprecedented wetland fires have garnered less attention in Australia, the western United States, and the north than their famous brother the Amazon. But the Pantanal Biome itself spans two states, and since June has seen more than 15,000 wildfires that have barely been controlled. The fact is that the Pantanal is an integral part of life in this part of Brazil.

When the water recedes during the dry season, the Pantanal attracts a large number of birds and other animals, one of the largest natural phenomena in the hemispheres. The Pantanal is a humid and dry tropical region with an average annual temperature of 21.5 °C (70.7 °F) and precipitation of 1,320 mm (52 in) per year. The lowlands of the Pantanal can be classified as wetlands, although the surrounding areas are mostly grasslands and rainforests.

Part of the headwaters of the Río de la Plata - the second-largest catchment in South America and the fifth-largest in the world - the Pantanal serves as a natural reservoir for alluvial waters flowing into the upper basin. Parts of the Pantanal have been declared a Biosphere Reserve and recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but overall, according to the WWF, less than 5% of the area is officially protected. Compared to other wetlands in the world, the Pantanal is still considered the best-preserved, with less than two percent under federal protection.