The Amazon forest tipping point

This is re-posted from the Nerd Corner 🤓

There's a big new paper out in Nature about the Amazon forest and its potential tipping point collapse:

For 65 million years, Amazonian forests remained relatively resilient to climatic variability. Now, the region is increasingly exposed to unprecedented stress from warming temperatures, extreme droughts, deforestation and fires, even in central and remote parts of the system.

The authors estimate that by 2050, 10–47% of the Amazonian may face “unexpected ecosystem transitions,” for example transitioning those parts of the rainforest into grasslands. Here's a map of ‘transition potential' from the paper, where redder indicates a greater threat to the rainforest:

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The study found that sections of rainforest could have three transition outcomes: 

1) Degraded rainforest, in which the forest cover recovers within a few years or decades but its composition and functioning may remain degraded for decades or centuries. This may be due to other species of trees or bamboo moving in to areas burned in wildfires, for example. This has already happened to about 4% of the Amazon.

2) White-sand savanna, which exist in patches within the rainforest and are expanding where floodplain forests are repeatedly disturbed by fires. When this transition happens, it seems to be pretty permanent.

3) Degraded open-canopy ecosystem, dominated by fire-tolerant tree and palm species plus alien invasive grasses, vines, and ferns. This kind of transition would probably also be long-lasting.

The authors conclude:

Keeping the Amazon forest resilient in the Anthropocene will depend on a combination of local efforts to end deforestation and degradation and to expand restoration, with global efforts to stop greenhouse gas emissions.

But there's still time to avoid a large-scale collapse if we can quickly curb climate pollution and deforestation, and engage in reforestation efforts. There's some good news – the new Lula administration has already succeeded in slowing the rate of Amazon deforestation in Brazil. Passing the FOREST Act in the US would also help to reduce deforestation.

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