Amazon Rainforest May Be Approaching a Critical Tipping Point, Study Finds - The New Yo... - 0 views
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The Amazon is losing its ability to recover from disturbances like droughts and land-use changes, scientists reported Monday, adding to concern that the rainforest is approaching a critical threshold beyond which much of it will be replaced by grassland, with vast consequences for biodiversity and climate change.
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The scientists said their research did not pinpoint when this threshold, which they described as a tipping point, might be reached.
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Losing the rainforest could result in up to 90 billion tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide getting put back into the atmosphere, he said, equivalent to several years of global emissions. That would make limiting global warming more difficult.
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But some research has concluded that deforestation, drying and other factors could lead to substantial forest dieback in the Amazon by the end of this century.
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Covering more than two million square miles in Brazil and neighboring countries, the Amazon is the world’s largest rainforest, and serves a crucial role in mitigating climate change in most years by taking in more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than it releases.
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But climate change, together with widespread deforestation and burning for agriculture and ranching, has taken a toll on the Amazon, making it warmer and drier. The region, one of the wettest on Earth, has experienced three droughts since 2000.
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“That lack of resilience shows that, indeed, there is only so much of a beating that this forest can take,”
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The researchers found that more than three-quarters of the untouched rainforest lost resiliency over that time, and that the loss was greatest in areas that were drier or closer to human activities like logging. The study was published in the journal Nature Climate Change.
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About 17 percent of the Amazon has been deforested over the past half-century, and while the pace of deforestation slowed for some years in Brazil, it has picked up again more recently