Amazon near tipping point of shifting from rainforest to savannah, study suggests

[Eugene]

Related: Pronounced loss of Amazon rainforest resilience since the early 2000s (Nature Climate Change)

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Source: CNN

Amazon near tipping point of shifting from rainforest to savannah, study suggests

By Katie Hunt, CNN
Updated 1610 GMT (0010 HKT) March 7, 2022

(CNN) — The Amazon rainforest may be nearing a critical tipping point that could see the biologically rich and diverse ecosystem transformed into a grassy savannah.

The fate of the rainforest is crucial to the health of the planet because it is home to a unique array of animal and plant life, stores a huge amount of carbon and strongly influences global weather patterns.

Scientists say that about three quarters of the rainforest is showing signs of "resilience loss" -- a reduced ability to recover from disturbances like droughts, logging and fires. Their study is based on month-to-month observations of satellite data from the past 20 years that has mapped the biomass (the area's organic material ) and the greenness of the forest to show how it has changed in response to fluctuating weather conditions.

This decreasing resilience since the early 2000s is a warning sign of irreversible decline, the authors said. While it isn't possible to tell exactly when the transition from rainforest to savannah might happen, once it was obvious, it would be too late to stop.

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Read more: https://edition.cnn.com/2022/03/07/americas/amazon-tipping-point-climate-scn/index.html

[Judi Lynn]

1. "to late to stop...." The effort to stop it immediately, however, can never end. Never.

What a monstrous crime against life itself.

Pure evil, would have been so easy to avoid.

[Judi Lynn]

2. 'Losing resilience faster': Drying Amazon rainforest struggling to recover

By Anastasia Moloney
Updated March 8, 2022 — 12.54pmfirst published at 3.21am

Bogota, Colombia: The Amazon rainforest is recovering more slowly from longer periods of drought, damaging its complex ecosystem and pushing the world’s largest tropical forest nearer a possible tipping point.

A study published in the journal Nature Climate Change on Tuesday (AEDT), found that, over the past two decades, more than three-quarters of the rainforest lost the ability to recover from shocks, such as droughts and fires, and return to a healthy state.

“In [forest] areas that are closer to human land use, such as urban areas and croplands, they tend to be losing resilience faster,” said Chris Boulton, one of the report authors from the University of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute. Drier areas that receive less rainfall also have been particularly hard hit, he said.

Curbing rising Amazon deforestation is vital to preventing runaway climate change impacts because of the vast amount of planet-heating carbon dioxide absorbed by the forest’s trees.

More:
https://www.smh.com.au/world/south-america/losing-resilience-faster-drying-amazon-rainforest-struggling-to-recover-20220308-p5a2lg.html