Will climate change kill the Amazon?
March 28, 2007
The leakage of fires from deforested areas. Credit: Liana Anderson.
One of the most profound predicted impacts of climate change was discussed in a landmark conference at Oriel College by scientists, conservationists and policymakers from Europe and North and South America.
They discussed some key research showing that although intact forests are fairly resistant to climate change, with partial deforestation the entire landscape could become drier and a domino effect could occur producing a 'tipping point' affecting the whole forest. Scientists were unwilling to quantify the risk of this happening, but talked about ‘corridors of probability’ with models predicting the risk at between 10 to 40 per cent over the next few decades.
In 2005 a very large spread of forest fires was recorded for the first time in the south-western Amazon region. New research by Dr Luiz Aragao, from the Environmental Change Institute, tracked the full extent of those fires in the most affected region – Acre State in Brazil. He said: ‘An area of 2,800 sq km (1,081 sq miles) was burned due to an extensive leakage of fires into newly-flammable forest.’ He also revealed that the fires occurred mainly where there was human activity.
The interdisciplinary conference examined how conservation and sustainable development strategies could buffer the region against climate change, and how a new international market in carbon-trading could finance such a plan.
An early wake-up call on the potential die-back of the Amazon rainforest due to a drying climate emerged from the Met Office Hadley Centre climate model five years ago. The issue of Amazonian die-back then leapt from scientists’ computer predictions to global environmental concern with the unexpected Amazonian drought of 2005, and questions were then asked about whether this should be viewed as a harbinger of things to come.
Conference organiser, Dr Yadvinder Malhi, from the Environmental Change Institute and Oriel College, said: ‘The 2005 Amazon drought took much of the scientific community by surprise, but also provided a window of opportunity to understand how climate change may drive drought, and how humans and ecosystems respond to such drought stress. We need to learn from this quickly, to plan a future for an Amazonian where such droughts may become commonplace.’
Source: University of Oxford
-
Humans may have helped the decline of African rainforests 3000 years ago
17 hours ago |
4.2 / 5 (10) |
12
-
Streams need trees to withstand climate change
14 hours ago |
not rated yet |
0
-
Big trees face 'dire future'
Feb 09, 2012 |
5 / 5 (2) |
0
-
Trees find the nitrogen they need, even in a super-size CO2 world
Feb 09, 2012 |
5 / 5 (1) |
0
-
Building mountains in a bottle
Feb 08, 2012 |
4.5 / 5 (2) |
0
-
Engineers build first sub-10-nm carbon nanotube transistor
Feb 01, 2012 |
4.9 / 5 (31) |
30
-
Something old, something new: Evolution and the structural divergence of duplicate genes
Jan 31, 2012 |
4.6 / 5 (7) |
1
-
The hidden nanoworld of ice crystals: Revealing the dynamic behavior of quasi-liquid layers
Jan 30, 2012 |
5 / 5 (3) |
1
-
Stock market network reveals investor clustering
Jan 27, 2012 |
3.9 / 5 (23) |
8
-
Of microchemistry and molecules: Electronic microfluidic device synthesizes biocompatible probes
Jan 26, 2012 |
5 / 5 (1) |
0
-
Discrepancy between oxygen and carbon-dioxide levels
Feb 09, 2012
-
where gems are found in the world
Feb 09, 2012
-
Wind Waves in Reservoir ~ Wind run-up and Wind set-up
Feb 08, 2012
-
Balance of oxygen in the atmosphere
Feb 01, 2012
-
The case for a methanol-based economy
Jan 30, 2012
-
Weather in a rotating cylinder
Jan 25, 2012
- More from Physics Forums - Earth
More news stories
Humans may have helped the decline of African rainforests 3000 years ago
(PhysOrg.com) -- Large areas of rainforests in Central Africa mysteriously disappeared over three thousand years ago, to be replaced by savannas. The prevailing theory has been that the cause was a change ...
Could Venus be shifting gear?
(PhysOrg.com) -- ESAs Venus Express spacecraft has discovered that our cloud-covered neighbour spins a little slower than previously measured. Peering through the dense atmosphere in the infrared, the ...
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
13 hours ago |
5 / 5 (7) |
7
|
NASA budget will axe Mars deal with Europe: scientists
US President Barack Obama's budget proposal to be submitted next week for 2013 will cut NASA's budget by 20 percent and eliminate a major partnership with Europe on Mars exploration, scientists said Thursday.
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
16 hours ago |
5 / 5 (2) |
18
Mars Science Laboratory computer issue resolved
(PhysOrg.com) -- Engineers have found the root cause of a computer reset that occurred two months ago on NASA's Mars Science Laboratory and have determined how to correct it.
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
14 hours ago |
4.7 / 5 (6) |
3
|
NASA sees wide-eyed cyclone Jasmine
Cyclone Jasmine's eye has opened wider on NASA satellite imagery, as it moves through the Southern Pacific Ocean.
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
5 hours ago |
3.5 / 5 (2) |
1
Google users warned of threat to smartphone wallets
Users of Google smartphone wallets were being warned on Friday that there is a way to crack pass codes intended to thwart thieves from going on illicit shopping sprees.
Anonymous knocks CIA website offline (Update)
The website of the Central Intelligence Agency was inaccessible on Friday after the hacker group Anonymous claimed to have knocked it offline.
New error-correcting codes guarantee the fastest possible rate of data transmission
Error-correcting codes are one of the triumphs of the digital age. Theyre a way of encoding information so that it can be transmitted across a communication channel such as an optical fiber o ...
Complex wiring of the nervous system may rely on a just a handful of genes and proteins
Researchers at the Salk Institute have discovered a startling feature of early brain development that helps to explain how complex neuron wiring patterns are programmed using just a handful of critical genes. ...
The power of estrogen -- male snakes attract other males
A new study has shown that boosting the estrogen levels of male garter snakes causes them to secrete the same pheromones that females use to attract suitors, and turned the males into just about the sexiest ...
New power source discovered
(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and RMIT University have made a breakthrough in energy storage and power generation.