Shrink savannah full#

If drought, fire or deforestation damage too many trees, reduced rainfall leads to less vegetation, and so on in a shrinking cycle. A water molecule travelling across the Amazon can fall as rain up to six times 4. The forest plays a major part in keeping itself alive, by recycling water through trees to generate rainfall.

Shrink savannah full#

The air is full of moisture that sustains the rainforest ecosystem. No matter the season, the temperature above the tree canopy is always high enough to make it sweaty for researchers climbing up a monitoring tower there. “It’s a very difficult moment for those who know, love and work in Amazonia,” says Eduardo Góes Neves, an archaeologist at the University of São Paulo, Brazil.

There’s little doubt that the situation is becoming dire. They hope to have their assessment ready in time for the United Nations climate negotiations in Glasgow, UK, this November. Last September, a few dozen researchers formed a Science Panel for the Amazon that will report on the state of the rainforest, and suggest what needs to be done to conserve it. But others say they lack the evidence to make specific forecasts about how long the rainforest can remain healthy. Some have warned that the forest will soon reach a tipping point that could turn much of it into dry scrubland. In the face of a warming climate, increased deforestation and fiercer fires, scientists are more worried than ever about the Amazon. Many scientists have linked these surges to the anti-environmentalist rhetoric of Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro. The number of fires that month was the highest for any August since an extreme drought in 2010 (see ‘Forest loss’). And last August, videos of wildfires in the Amazon made international headlines. Last year, deforestation in Brazil spiked by around 30% to almost 10,000 km 2, the largest loss in a decade. In the 2000s, Brazil was praised for drastically slowing forest loss, but the rate has since risen as a result of political turmoil and an economic recession. Tree clearing has already shrunk the forest by around 15% from its 1970s extent of more than 6 million square kilometres in Brazil, which contains more than half the forest, more than 19% has disappeared. Those adapted to drier climes, such as the Brazil nut tree ( Bertholletia excelsa) are thriving 3.Īt the same time, large parts of the Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest, are being cut down and burnt. In 2018, a study reported that trees that do best in moist conditions, such as tropical legumes from the genus Inga, are dying. That’s all driving a shift in vegetation. Severe droughts have hit three times since 2005. In some parts, the dry season has expanded during the past 50 years, from four months to almost five 2. Over the past century, the average temperature in the forest has risen by 1–1.5 ☌ 1.

This rainforest - which holds 16,000 separate tree species - is slowly drying out. It looks like a rich and healthy ecosystem, but appearances are deceiving. Seen from a monitoring tower above the treetops near Manaus in the Brazilian Amazon, the rainforest canopy stretches to the horizon as an endless sea of green.