The Amazon rainforest plays a key role in climate change. According to a new study, however, it could soon become a danger.
Exeter – The Amazon rainforest plays a key role in the fight against climate change. While the biome is currently storing CO2 and thus delaying the crisis, a tipping point could be reached at some point where the rainforest is doing more harm than good to the climate. According to a new study from Great Britain, this point in time is closer than expected.
The University of Exeter study examined the resilience of the Amazon. It states that the rainforest’s ability to store CO2 has been declining for decades. There have even been times when the Amazon has become a source of carbon dioxide due to dying trees. This effect could increase in the future. It has been estimated that a loss of 20 to 25 percent of forest cover in the Amazon Basin could be enough to reach a tipping point. This would mean that the rainforest would turn into a vast savanna, with devastating consequences for the global climate.
Amazon resilience study: Climate change is damaging the rainforest
The current study now concludes that more than 75 percent of the Amazon has lost resilience since the early 2000s. This was investigated using high-resolution satellite data on changes in biomass and productivity in the rainforest. In particular, human land use and drought are cited as factors that weaken the Amazon. According to Niklas Boers, one of the study’s co-authors, the latter is particularly alarming, as experts expect “a general drying out of the Amazon region in response to man-made global warming”.
As a result of climate change, the rainforest is drying out, which in turn accelerates climate change. But the direct impact of human activity on the Amazon is also a problem, according to the study’s authors. According to them, reducing deforestation “would not only protect the parts of the forest that are immediately threatened, but also promote the resilience of the Amazon rainforest on a much larger spatial scale.” importing meat and feeding farm animals with feed soy from the Amazon contribute significantly to the destruction of the forest.
Deforestation has increased significantly under the regime of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. That is why an environmental organization reported Bolsonaro to the International Criminal Court. (vbu/dpa)
Header list image: © Leo Correa / dpa
