by Laura Petersen
Jos Barlow, Ph.D. Image by Flavio Forner.
Conservation scientist Jos Barlow landed in Santarém, a small city on the Amazon River in northern Brazil, for annual fieldwork researching biodiversity and ecosystem services. It was November 2015 and large swaths of forest were on fire.
“Normally, you get off the plane, and you are hit by this wall of heat and humidity, but this time, you got off the plane, it was acrid smoke burning the back of your throat,” says Barlow. “The whole region was under a pall of smoke.”
A professor of conservation science at Lancaster University, Barlow presented at the 2021 AAAS Annual Meeting held earlier this month about his research studying restoration, biodiversity and climate adaptation in the Amazon.