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The future of the world's largest rainforest looks bleak. A new report for Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development concluded that the Amazon rainforest will collapse and largely become a dry, shrubby plain by 2064. Development, deforestation and the climate crisis are to blame, study author and University of Florida geologist Robert Toovey Walker found, UPI reported.
Walker reviewed recent research, offering that heavy development in Amazonian nations depleted the forest and threatens to push it over the edge towards destruction.
By nature of being a rainforest, the canopy creates its own precipitation. The local environment and inhabitants rely on the freshwater created therein for survival. The ecosystem can recover from smaller, periodic droughts but longer and more severe events are already diminishing the forest's long-term resilience, Interesting Engineering reported.
Longer dry seasons, which the rainforest is already experiencing and which are exacerbated by deforestation and the climate crisis, prevent rainforest canopies from recovering from fires. Flammable grasses and shrubs "permanently invade" and take over the landscape; the tropical rainforest dries out and transforms into a tropical savanna, the study found.
"A forest cannot survive if its canopy needs more than 4 years to recover from a yearly [drought] event," Walker wrote in the report. "Southern Amazonia can expect to reach a tipping point sometime before 2064 at the current rate of dry-season lengthening."
www.ecowatch.com
Walker reviewed recent research, offering that heavy development in Amazonian nations depleted the forest and threatens to push it over the edge towards destruction.
By nature of being a rainforest, the canopy creates its own precipitation. The local environment and inhabitants rely on the freshwater created therein for survival. The ecosystem can recover from smaller, periodic droughts but longer and more severe events are already diminishing the forest's long-term resilience, Interesting Engineering reported.
Longer dry seasons, which the rainforest is already experiencing and which are exacerbated by deforestation and the climate crisis, prevent rainforest canopies from recovering from fires. Flammable grasses and shrubs "permanently invade" and take over the landscape; the tropical rainforest dries out and transforms into a tropical savanna, the study found.
"A forest cannot survive if its canopy needs more than 4 years to recover from a yearly [drought] event," Walker wrote in the report. "Southern Amazonia can expect to reach a tipping point sometime before 2064 at the current rate of dry-season lengthening."
Amazon Rainforest Will Collapse by 2064, New Study Predicts - EcoWatch
The future of the world's largest rainforest looks bleak. A report for Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development concluded that the Amazon rainforest will collapse and largely become a dry, shrubby plain by 2064. Development, deforestation and the climate crisis are to blame...
www.ecowatch.com
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