Amazon rainforests

Amazon rainforests

Subject: Environment

Context: In a study published in the journal Nature, scientists who conducted this research over a period of nine years in the eastern Amazon forests have said that a significant amount of deforestation in eastern and southeastern Brazil has turned the forest into a source of CO2 that has the ability to warm the planet.

Concept:

Amazon rainforests

• The Amazon rainforests cover about 80 per cent of the basin and as per NASA’s Earth observatory, they are home to nearly a fifth of the world’s land species and is also home to about 30 million people including indigenous groups and several isolated tribes.
• The Amazon basin is huge with an area covering over 6 million square kilometres, it is nearly twice the size of India.
• The Amazon forests have absorbed CO2 from the atmosphere, helping to moderate the global climate
• The basin produces about 20 per cent of the world’s flow of freshwater into the oceans. Over the last few years, the forest has been under threat due to deforestation and burning.
• Forest fires, have doubled since 2013.

Findings:

• The Amazon forests in South America, which are the largest tropical forests in the world, have started emitting carbon dioxide (CO2) instead of absorbing carbon emissions.
• Some forests in Southeast Asia have also turned into carbon sources in the last few years as a result of formation of plantations and fires.
• The reason that they happen is when farmers burn their land to clear it for the next crop
• Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon comprises about two-thirds of the area of the rainforest
• NASA’s Earth Observatory notes that state policies that encourage economic development, such as railway and road expansion projects have led to “unintentional deforestation” in the Amazon and Central America.
• Researchers are not saying that because of significant levels of deforestation (over the course of 40 years) there has been a long-term decrease in rainfall and increase in temperatures during the dry season. Because of these reasons the eastern Amazon forests are no longer carbon sinks, whereas the more intact and wetter forests in the central and western parts are neither carbon sinks nor are they emitters.
• the conversion of forests into agricultural land, caused a 17 per cent decrease in the forest cover,
• Scientists have recorded a 25 per cent reduction in precipitation and a temperature increase of at least 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit or 1.5 degrees Celsius during the dry months.