Study Tries To Tie Together All The GHGs Produced By & Damaging Amazon Basin Forests

[hatrack]

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What’s clear is that the forest has been changing fast and in alarming ways. Rain now falls in massive bursts more frequently than it once did, triggering record floods. Droughts come more often and, in some areas, last longer. Trees that fare better in wet places are being outcompeted by tall, drought-tolerant species. Illegally set fires are on the rise again. About 5.4 million acres burned in 2019, an area roughly the size of New Jersey.

So, in 2019, the National Geographic Society brought Covey, Soper, and a team of other Amazon experts together to begin trying to dissect how all of these pieces fit together. They didn’t take new measurements—they looked for new ways to analyze existing data with an eye toward a comprehensive picture.
Looking beyond CO2

While the results include some uncertainty, they make clear that focusing on a single metric—CO2—simply doesn’t paint an accurate picture. “As important as carbon is in the Amazon, it’s not the only thing that’s going on,” says Tom Lovejoy, a senior fellow in biodiversity with the United Nations Foundation, who has worked in the Brazilian Amazon for decades. “The only surprise, if you can call it that, is how much more there is when you add it all up.”

Resource extraction, damming rivers, and the conversion of forest for soybean and livestock production all alter the natural systems in a variety of ways. But most serve to warm the climate. Methane is a particularly important player. While the largest sources of methane are still from natural forest processes, the Amazon’s capacity to take up carbon used to do far more to offset its methane emissions. Humans have diminished that capacity. Rob Jackson, an earth systems scientist at Stanford University and a leading expert on global greenhouse emissions, considers the new research a worthwhile contribution. “The Amazon is vulnerable, and we tend to get tunnel vision about one greenhouse gas alone,” he says.

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https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/amazon-rainforest-now-appears-to-be-contributing-to-climate-change

[rickyhall]

1. Slow suicide.