The Amazon rainforest is slowly losing its ability to regenerate
A recent survey published on March 10, 2022, revealed that the Damaged Amazon rainforest is losing its ability to regenerate due to climate change and continued deforestation.
These consequences could turn the region into an uninhabitable treeless meadow, with dire consequences for the region itself and the rest of the world.
Researchers have warned that the survey results could mean that Amazon could reach the brink of collapse faster than expected.
Analyzing 25 years of satellite data, researchers have, for the first time, measured the resilience of the Amazon against droughts and wildfires, a vital indicator of the overall state of the forest.
The report has published in a renewed journal named “Nature: Climate Change.” Researchers revealed that more than three-quarters of the Amazon Basin, home to half of its rainforests, has lost its resilience. In areas most affected by deforestation or drought, the ability of forests to regenerate reduces by almost half.
During an interview with AFP, Tim Lenton, the director and co-author of the Global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter, said, “Two factors have greatly influenced our measure of resilience.
One is the high human presence, and the other is the dry areas. According to climate models, global temperatures warming the Earth’s surface by an average of 1.1 degrees Celsius could slowly turn the Amazon into an irreversible arid state.
If carbon pollution continues unabated, the process of deforestation will begin by the middle of this century. However, of course, the cause is not just climate change
— people are busy cutting down or burning forests, which is another reason. These two things interact, so there are fears that the transformation could happen even earlier.”
In addition to the Amazon, Greenland, and West Antarctic ice, carbon-di-oxide and methane-rich Siberian groundwater, seasonal rainfall in South Asia, coral reef ecosystems, and Atlantic Ocean currents are all at risk.
