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Abstract

Humans have used fire extensively as a tool to shape Earth’s vegetation. The slash-and-burn destruction of Brazil’s Atlantic forest, which once covered over 1.3 million km2 of present-day Brazil and was one of the largest tropical forest biomes on Earth1, is a prime example. Here, we estimate the amount of black carbon generated by the burning of the Atlantic forest, using historical records of land cover, satellite data and black carbon conversion ratios. We estimate that before 1973, destruction of the Atlantic forest generated 200–500 million tons of black carbon. We then estimate the amount of black carbon exported from this relict forest between 1997 and 2008, using measurements of polycyclic aromatic black carbon collected from a large river draining the region, and a continuous record of river discharge. We show that dissolved black carbon (DBC) continues to be mobilized from the watershed each year in the rainy season, despite the fact that widespread forest burning ceased in 1973. We estimate that the river exports 2,700 tons of DBC to the ocean each year. Scaling our findings up, we estimate that 50,000–70,000 tons of DBC are exported from the former forest each year. We suggest that an increase in black carbon production on land could increase the size of the refractory pool of dissolved organic carbon in the deep ocean.