Majoi Nascimento, Ph.D., from Florida Tech is seen here collecting charred material for analysis in the Brazilian Amazon.
Amazonia Nears Tipping Point, New Paper Reports
Amazonia is closer to a catastrophic ecological tipping point than any time in the last 100,000 years, and human activity is the cause.
In a new paper published today in the Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden, Florida Tech biology professor Mark Bush describes how the vast Amazonian rainforest could be replaced by savanna, which is a grassland with few trees, within our lifetime.
Rainforests rely on high humidity and have no adaptation to withstand fire. Bush uses fossil pollen and charcoal recovered from lake sediments dating back thousands of years to track changes in vegetation and fire frequency through time. He has found that fires were almost unknown in Amazonia before the arrival of humans.
Relatively small-scale disturbances caused by the first inhabitants of Amazonia over the last 10,000 years did not bring the system to a tipping point because it could recover from these minor events. But the modern effects of a warming climate and elevated drought risk – both the product of anthropogenic climate change – are combining with much larger-scale deforestation and burning in Amazonia to create the conditions where vast areas of rainforest could transition to savanna in a matter of decades.
“The immense biodiversity of the rainforest is at risk from fire,” Bush said.
One of the key points of the paper, “New and repeating tipping points: the interplay of fire, climate change and deforestation in Neotropical ecosystems,” is that while no individual government can control climate change, fire can be regulated through policy. Almost all fires in Amazonia are set deliberately by people and have become much more frequent in the last two years, because of altered policy, than over the previous decade.
Bush’s data show that the tipping point is likely to be reached if temperatures rise by another 2 to 3 degrees Fahrenheit. Anthropogenic warming would bring those temperatures by the end of this century, but increased burning creates hotter, drier, less shaded landscapes that could hasten that transition.
“Warming alone could induce the tipping point by mid-century, but if the present policies that turn a blind eye to forest destruction aren’t stopped, we could reach the tipping point much sooner,” Bush said.
He added, “Beyond the loss of wildlife, the cascading effects of losing Amazonian rainforest would alter rainfall across the hemisphere. This is not a remote problem, but one of global importance and critical significance to food security that should concern us all.”
The Latest Updates from Bing News & Google News
Go deeper with Bing News on:
Amazonia
- How chocolate could counter climate change
At a red-brick factory in the German port city of Hamburg, cocoa bean shells go in one end, and out the other comes an amazing black powder with the potential to counter climate change.To make better ...
- ‘You’re looking to die’: the Brazil river where illegal fishing threatens lives
Poaching of endangered species flourishes despite widespread outcry – but sustainable fishing could end the violence engulfing the trade ...
- 12,000-Year-Old Artwork Uncovered in the Rainforest of All Places
Archeologists have uncovered a vast canvas of rock art paintings dating back to the era of the Ice Age. The canvas is ...
- Only Total Peace in Colombia Can Save the Amazon and the Indigenous | Opinion
Total peace must reach every corner of Colombia, flowing through the rivers, roads, and trails of the most remote parts of the country.
- Amazonia man dies in wreck
The Missouri State Highway Patrol says an Andrew County man died in a single vehicle wreck overnight Sunday-Monday.
Go deeper with Google Headlines on:
Amazonia
[google_news title=”” keyword=”Amazonia” num_posts=”5″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]
Go deeper with Bing News on:
Ecological tipping point
- Replanting the Amazon could help save the world’s climate. Here’s why it’s so hard to do
Restoring Brazil’s rainforest has largely fallen to nonprofits. They're battling illegal land-grabbers, tight budgets, botanical mysteries – and the clock.
- Warming Climate Could Flip Mixotrophic Microbes from Carbon Sinks to Carbon Emitters
New research finds that a warming climate could flip globally abundant microbial communities from carbon sinks to carbon emitters, potentially triggering climate change tipping points ...
- Rising temperatures may flip plankton into carbon emitters
Scientists at Duke University and the University of California, Santa Barbara have identified a climate feedback loop involving widely distributed yet underappreciated microbes like plankton that ...
- Warming climate could turn ocean plankton microbes into carbon emitters
The findings are published in the British Ecological Society journal Functional Ecology ... occur starts to shrink until eventually the signal disappears and the tipping point arrives with no apparent ...
- The Planet Can’t Sustain Rapid Growth Much Longer
But you don’t want to get to the tipping point. You want to heed the flickering ... And that’s taking in all of our ecological footprint—mining, fishing, farming, logging.
Go deeper with Google Headlines on:
Ecological tipping point
[google_news title=”” keyword=”ecological tipping point” num_posts=”5″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]
