As the largest tropical rainforest in the Americas, the Amazonian rainforests have unparalleled biodiversity. One in ten known species in the world lives in the Amazon rainforest. This makes the largest collection of living plants and animal species in the
However, the increasing global temperature and the large scale of deforestation paint a bleak future for the region – a future where both people and biodiversity stand to
What is happening in the Amazon?
As habitat destruction trends interact with climate change, the concern is that the Amazon will be caught up in a set of “feedback loops” that could dramatically speed up the pace of forest lost and degradation and bring Amazon to a point of no return. This “no return” point may occur when Amazonian forests die and are progressively replaced by savanna, and rainfall is localised only on a regional scale
The bleak future for the Amazon
With the current rate of global warming, it’s expected by the year 2050; temperatures in the Amazon will increase by 2–3°C. At the same time, a decrease in rainfall during dry months will lead to widespread
Coupled with land-use changes, we can expect the degradation of freshwater systems, loss of ecologically valuable soils, increased erosion, decreased agricultural yields, and spread of infectious
We are now running a serious risk of losing a large piece of the Earth’s most precious land. If warming exceeds a few degrees Celsius, the process of ‘savannisation’ may well become irreversible.
