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
- Family empowers community to join mission in protecting critical insect species: 'We are all involved'
The Indigenous efforts to save the bee have also caught the eye of scientists, who are learning from and collaborating with the communities. Family empowers community to join mission in protecting ...
- Secrets from the rainforest’s past uncovered in Amazonian backyards
By Carolina Pinheiro Small fragments of ancestral Amazonian culture are emerging from the ground in the backyards of homes in the rural and urban parts of Parintins, Amazonas: pieces of broken pots, ...
- How ancient Amazonians transformed a toxic crop into a diet staple
Indigenous people devised a complex, multistep process of detoxification. The three staple crops dominating modern diets — corn, rice and wheat — are familiar to Americans. However, another top crop ...
- Feathers, cognition and global consumerism in colonial Amazonia
Amazonia is the home of the largest variety of birds in the world. In such a unique environment, craft cultures have flourished by translating the beauty and creativity of environmental materials like ...
- Cozy companions: Otters share dens and dreams in equatorial Amazonia
A new study published in PeerJ Life & Environment sheds light on the nocturnal behaviors of sympatric otters in equatorial Amazonia. Led by Darren Norris, a researcher at the Federal University of ...
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
- Why is Lakshadweep facing widespread coral bleaching?
A new survey by the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute has revealed that a substantial percentage of the hard coral species in Lakshadweep experienced severe bleaching due to an extended ...
- ‘Like wildfires underwater’: Worst summer on record for Great Barrier Reef as coral die-off sweeps planet
As the early morning sun rises over the Great Barrier Reef, its light pierces the turquoise waters of a shallow lagoon, bringing more than a dozen turtles to life.
- 8 looming climate tipping points that imperil our planet
A new report by the University of Exeter Global Systems Institute specifically pointed to three broad areas where tipping points are concentrated: the cryosphere, the biosphere and the ocean and ...
- ‘Reached its tipping point’: Tourism and sustainability in Bali aren’t a great match
Over 65 per cent of Bali’s fresh water is funnelled to tourism, which is contributing to a water shortage exacerbated by growing urbanization, recent droughts and climate change.
- Ecosystems are deeply interconnected—environmental research, policy and management should be too
We need managers and policy makers to consider ecological tipping points and how they can cascade though ecosystems from land into rivers and lakes and, ultimately, the ocean. Our work's standing ...
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”]