amazon rainforest case study a level

Tropical rainforest case study

Case study of a tropical rainforest setting to illustrate and analyse key themes in water and carbon cycles and their relationship to environmental change and human activity.

Amazon Forest The Amazon is the largest tropical rainforest on Earth. It sits within the Amazon River basin, covers some 40% of the South American continent and as you can see on the map below includes parts of eight South American countries: Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, and Suriname. The actual word “Amazon” comes from river. Amazing Amazon facts; • It is home to 1000 species of bird and 60,000 species of plants • 10 million species of insects live in the Amazon • It is home to 20 million people, who use the wood, cut down trees for farms and for cattle. • It covers 2.1 million square miles of land • The Amazon is home to almost 20% of species on Earth • The UK and Ireland would fit into the Amazon 17 times! The Amazon caught the public’s attention in the 1980s when a series of shocking news reports said that an area of rainforest the size of Belgium was being cut down and subsequently burnt every year. This deforestation has continued to the present day according to the Sao Paulo Space Research Centre. Current statistics suggest that we have lost 20% of Amazon rainforest. Their satellite data is also showing increased deforestation in parts of the Amazon.

Water The water cycle is very active within the Amazon rainforest and it interlinks the lithosphere, atmosphere and biosphere.  The basin is drained by the Amazon River and its tributaries.  The average discharge of water into the Atlantic Ocean by the Amazon is approximately 175,000 m 3 per second, or between 1/5th and 1/6th of the total discharge into the oceans of all of the world's rivers. 3 The Rio Negro, a tributary of the Amazon, is the second largest river in the world in terms of water flow, and is 100 meters deep and 14 kilometers wide near its mouth at Manaus, Brazil. Rainfall across the Amazon is very high.  Average rainfall across the whole Amazon basin is approximately 2300 mm annually. In some areas of the northwest portion of the Amazon basin, yearly rainfall can exceed 6000 mm. 3 Only around 1/3 of the rain that falls in the Amazon basin is discharged into the Atlantic Ocean. It is thought that; 1. Up to half of the rainfall in some areas may never reach the ground, being intercepted by the forest and re-evaporated into the atmosphere. 2. Additional evaporation occurs from ground and river surfaces, or is released into the atmosphere by transpiration from plant leaves (in which plants release water from their leaves during photosynthesis) 3. This moisture contributes to the formation of rain clouds, which release the water back onto the rainforest. In the Amazon, 50-80 percent of moisture remains in the ecosystem’s water cycle. 4

This means that much of the rainfall re-enters the water cycling system of the Amazon, and a given molecule of water may be "re-cycled" many times between the time that it leaves the surface of the Atlantic Ocean and is carried by the prevailing westerly winds into the Amazon basin, to the time that it is carried back to the ocean by the Amazon River. 4 It is thought that the water cycle of the Amazon has global effects.  The moisture created by rainforests travels around the world. Moisture created in the Amazon ends up falling as rain as far away as Texas, and forests in Southeast Asia influence rain patterns in south eastern Europe and China. 4 When forests are cut down, less moisture goes into the atmosphere and rainfall declines, sometimes leading to drought. These have been made worse by deforestation. 4 Change to the water and carbon cycles in the Amazon The main change to the Amazon rainforest is deforestation.  Deforestation in the Amazon is generally the result of land clearances for; 1. Agriculture (to grow crops like Soya or Palm oil) or for pasture land for cattle grazing 2. Logging – This involves cutting down trees for sale as timber or pulp.  The timber is used to build homes, furniture, etc. and the pulp is used to make paper and paper products.  Logging can be either selective or clear cutting. Selective logging is selective because loggers choose only wood that is highly valued, such as mahogany. Clear-cutting is not selective.  Loggers are interested in all types of wood and therefore cut all of the trees down, thus clearing the forest, hence the name- clear-cutting. 3. Road building – trees are also clear for roads.  Roads are an essential way for the Brazilian government to allow development of the Amazon rainforest.  However, unless they are paved many of the roads are unusable during the wettest periods of the year.  The Trans Amazonian Highway has already opened up large parts of the forest and now a new road is going to be paved, the BR163 is a road that runs 1700km from Cuiaba to Santarem. The government planned to tarmac it making it a superhighway. This would make the untouched forest along the route more accessible and under threat from development. 4. Mineral extraction – forests are also cleared to make way for huge mines. The Brazilian part of the Amazon has mines that extract iron, manganese, nickel, tin, bauxite, beryllium, copper, lead, tungsten, zinc and gold! 5. Energy developmen t – This has focussed mainly on using Hydro Electric Power, and there are 150 new dams planned for the Amazon alone.  The dams create electricity as water is passed through huge pipes within them, where it turns a turbine which helps to generate the electricity.  The power in the Amazon is often used for mining.  Dams displace many people and the reservoirs they create flood large area of land, which would previously have been forest.  They also alter the hydrological cycle and trap huge quantities of sediment behind them. The huge Belo Monte dam started operating in April 2016 and will generate over 11,000 Mw of power.  A new scheme the 8,000-megawatt São Luiz do Tapajós dam has been held up because of the concerns over the impacts on the local Munduruku people. 6. Settlement & population growth – populations are growing within the Amazon forest and along with them settlements.  Many people are migrating to the forest looking for work associated with the natural wealth of this environment. Settlements like Parauapebas, an iron ore mining town, have grown rapidly, destroying forest and replacing it with a swath of shanty towns. The population has grown from 154,000 in 2010 to 220,000 in 2012. The Brazilian Amazon’s population grew by a massive 23% between 2000 and 2010, 11% above the national average.

The WWF estimates that 27 per cent, more than a quarter, of the Amazon biome will be without trees by 2030 if the current rate of deforestation continues. They also state that Forest losses in the Amazon biome averaged 1.4 million hectares per year between 2001 and 2012, resulting in a total loss of 17.7 million hectares, mostly in Brazil, Peru and Bolivia.  12

The impacts of deforestation Atmospheric impacts Deforestation causes important changes in the energy and water balance of the Amazon. Pasturelands and croplands (e.g. soya beans and corn) have a higher albedo and decreased water demand, evapotranspiration and canopy interception compared with the forests they replace. 9 Lathuillière et al. 10 found that forests in the state of Mato Grosso; • Contributed about 50 km 3 per year of evapotranspiration to the atmosphere in the year 2000. • Deforestation reduced that forest flux rate by approximately 1 km 3 per year throughout the decade. • As a result, by 2009, forests were contributing about 40 km 3 per year of evapotranspiration in Mato Grosso.

Differences such as these can affect atmospheric circulation and rainfall in proportion to the scale of deforestation The agriculture that replaces forest cover also decreases precipitation. In Rondônia, Brazil, one of the most heavily deforested areas of Brazil, daily rainfall data suggest that deforestation since the 1970s has caused an 18-day delay in the onset of the rainy season. 11 SSE Amazon also has many wild fires, which are closely associated with deforestation, forest fragmentation and drought intensity. According to Coe et al (2015) “ the increased atmospheric aerosol loads produced by fires have been shown to decrease droplet size, increase cloud height and cloud lifetime and inhibit rainfall, particularly in the dry season in the SSE Amazon. Thus, fires and drought may create a positive feedback in the SSE Amazon such that drought is more severe with continued deforestation and climate change .” 9

The impacts of climate change on the Amazon According to the WWF: • Some Amazon species capable of moving fast enough will attempt to find a more suitable environment. Many other species will either be unable to move or will have nowhere to go. • Higher temperatures will impact temperature-dependent species like fish, causing their distribution to change. • Reduced rainfall and increased temperatures may also reduce suitable habitat during dry, warm months and potentially lead to an increase in invasive, exotic species, which then can out-compete native species. • Less rainfall during the dry months could seriously affect many Amazon rivers and other freshwater systems. • The impact of reduced rainfall is a change in nutrient input into streams and rivers, which can greatly affect aquatic organisms. • A more variable climate and more extreme events will also likely mean that Amazon fish populations will more often experience hot temperatures and potentially lethal environmental conditions. • Flooding associated with sea-level rise will have substantial impacts on lowland areas such as the Amazon River delta. The rate of sea-level rise over the last 100 years has been 1.0-2.5 mm per year, and this rate could rise to 5 mm per year. • Sea-level rise, increased temperature, changes in rainfall and runoff will likely cause major changes in species habitats such as mangrove ecosystems. 15 Impacts of deforestation on soils Removing trees deprives the forest of portions of its canopy, which blocks the sun’s rays during the day, and holds in heat at night. This disruption leads to more extreme temperature swings that can be harmful to plants and animals. 8 Without protection from sun-blocking tree cover, moist tropical soils quickly dry out. In terms of Carbon, Tropical soils contain a lot of carbon.  The top meter holds 66.9 PgC with around 52% of this carbon pool held in the top 0.3 m of the soil, the layer which is most prone to changes upon land use conversion and deforestation. 14 Deforestation releases much of this carbon through clearance and burning.  For the carbon that remains in the soil, when it rains soil erosion will wash much of the carbon away into rivers after initial deforestation and some will be lost to the atmosphere via decomposition too. 

Impacts of deforestation on Rivers Trees also help continue the water cycle by returning water vapor to the atmosphere. When trees are removed this cycle is severely disrupted and areas can suffer more droughts. There are many consequences of deforestation and climate change for the water cycle in forests; 1. There is increased soil erosion and weathering of rainforest soils as water acts immediately upon them rather than being intercepted. 2. Flash floods are more likely to happen as there is less interception and absorption by the forest cover. 3. Conversely, the interruption of normal water cycling has resulted in more droughts in the forest, increasing the risk of wild fires 4. More soil and silt is being washed into rivers, resulting in changes to waterways and transport 5. Disrupt water supplies to many people in Brazil

References 1 - Malhi, Y. et al. The regional variation of aboveground live biomass in old-growth Amazonian forests. Glob. Chang. Biol. 12, 1107–1138 (2006). 2 - Fernando D.B. Espírito-Santo  et al.  Size and frequency of natural forest disturbances and the Amazon forest carbon balance. Nature Communications volume 5, Article number: 3434 (2014) Accessed 3rd of January 2019 retrieved from https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms4434#ref4 3 - Project Amazonas. Accessed 3rd of January 2019 retrieved from https://www.projectamazonas.org/amazon-facts  4 - Rhett Butler, 2012. IMPACT OF DEFORESTATION: LOCAL AND NATIONAL CONSEQUENCES.  Accessed 3rd of January 2019 retrieved from https://rainforests.mongabay.com/0902.htm 5 – Mark Kinver. Amazon: 1% of tree species store 50% of region's carbon. 2015. BBC. Accessed 3rd of January 2019 retrieved from https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-32497537 6 -     Sophie Fauset et al. Hyperdominance in Amazonian forest carbon cycling. Nature Communications volume 6, Article number: 6857 (2015). Accessed 3rd of January 2019 retrieved from https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms7857 7- Brienen, R.J.W et al. (2015) Long-term decline of the Amazon carbon sink, Nature, h ttps://www.nature.com/articles/nature14283 8 – National Geographic – Deforestation - Learn about the man-made and natural causes of deforestation–and how it's impacting our planet. Accessed 20th of January 2019 retrieved from https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/deforestation/

9 -  Michael T. Coe, Toby R. Marthews, Marcos Heil Costa, David R. Galbraith, Nora L. Greenglass, Hewlley M. A. Imbuzeiro, Naomi M. Levine, Yadvinder Malhi, Paul R. Moorcroft, Michel Nobre Muza, Thomas L. Powell, Scott R. Saleska, Luis A. Solorzano, and Jingfeng Wang. (2015) Deforestation and climate feedbacks threaten the ecological integrity of south–southeastern Amazonia. 368, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. Accessed 20th of January 2019 retrieved from http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/368/1619/20120155

10 - Lathuillière MJ, Mark S, Johnson MS & Donner SD. (2012). Water use by terrestrial ecosystems: temporal variability in rainforest and agricultural contributions to evapotranspiration in Mato Grosso, Brazil. Environmental research Letters Volume 7 Number 2. http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/7/2/024024/meta

11- Nathalie Butt, Paula Afonso de Oliveira & Marcos Heil Costa (2011). Evidence that deforestation affects the onset of the rainy season in Rondonia, Brazil JGR Atmospheres, Volume 116, Issue D11. https://doi.org/10.1029/2010JD015174

12 – WWF, Amazon Deforestation. Accessed 20th of January 2019 retrieved from http://wwf.panda.org/our_work/forests/deforestation_fronts/deforestation_in_the_amazon/

13 - Berenguer, E., Ferreira, J., Gardner, T. A., Aragão, L. E. O. C., De Camargo, P. B., Cerri, C. E., Durigan, M., Oliveira, R. C. D., Vieira, I. C. G. and Barlow, J. (2014), A large-scale field assessment of carbon stocks in human-modified tropical forests. Global Change Biology, 20: 3713–3726. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/gcb.12627

14 - N.HBatjes, J.ADijkshoorn, (1999). Carbon and nitrogen stocks in the soils of the Amazon Region. Geoderma, Volume 89, Issues 3–4, Pages 273-286. Accessed 20th of January 2019 retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001670619800086X

15 – WWF, Impacts of climate change in the Amazon. Accessed 20th of January 2019 retrieved from http://wwf.panda.org/knowledge_hub/where_we_work/amazon/amazon_threats/climate_change_amazon/amazon_climate_change_impacts/

Written by Rob Gamesby

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Amazon Rainforest Case Study: PDF, Answers, and Notes | GCSE & A Level Geography

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The Amazon Rainforest, also known as Amazonia, covers much of northwest Brazil and extends into Colombia, Peru, and other South American countries. The rainforest comprises about 40% of Brazil's total area and is the largest rainforest in the world, covering around 6 million km2. It is also the largest river basin in the world.

Landscape and Biodiversity

The Amazon Rainforest is home to one in ten known species on Earth and contains 1.4 billion acres of dense forest, accounting for half of the planet's remaining tropical forests. It includes the 3,977-mile-long Amazon River, the second-largest river on earth after the Nile. Additionally, the Amazon basin covers 2.6 million square miles, about 40% of South America.

The diverse ecosystem of the Amazon Rainforest includes species such as the jaguar, macaw, Amazon river dolphin, black spider monkey, and the poison dart frog.

Importance and Deforestation

There is a clear link between the health of the Amazon and the health of the planet. The rainforest, which contains 90-140 billion tons of carbon, helps to stabilize the local and global climate. However, deforestation releases significant amounts of carbon, leading to negative consequences around the world.

According to the Amazon Conservation map, deforestation hotspots in 2021 resulted from land clearances for agriculture, logging, road building, mineral extraction, energy development, cattle ranching, and settlement and population growth. These activities have altered the water and carbon cycles in the rainforest.

Causes of Deforestation

The main causes of deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest include:

• Commercial farming (65-80%)
• Subsistence farming (20-25%)
• Logging (2-3%)
• Road building
• Mineral extraction
• Energy developments
• Settlements and population growth

Cattle ranching has been the leading cause of deforestation, with around 200 million cattle in Brazil. Subsistence farming, logging, road building, mineral extraction, energy developments, and population growth have also contributed to deforestation.

Impacts of Deforestation

The impacts of deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest are significant, including:

• Economic development
• Soil erosion
• Contribution to climate change

Deforestation has brought in jobs and income, but it has also destroyed resources in the long term and disrupted the livelihoods of locals. Soil erosion has led to landslides and flooding while decreasing nutrients in the soil. Furthermore, the cutting down of trees has altered the water cycle, leading to drier and warmer climates.

In conclusion, the Amazon Rainforest is a crucial ecosystem with global significance, and preserving it is essential for the health of the planet. Efforts to combat deforestation and promote sustainable land use practices are critical for the continued well-being of the Amazon Rainforest and the world as a whole.

Summary - Geography

• The Amazon Rainforest covers a large area in South America
• It is home to diverse species and the Amazon River
• Deforestation in the Amazon affects the global climate
• Causes of deforestation include farming, logging, and road building
• Deforestation leads to economic impacts and alters the water cycle

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Frequently asked questions on the topic of Geography

Q: What is the total area covered by the Amazon Rainforest?

A: The Amazon Rainforest covers around 6 million km2, comprising about 40% of Brazil's total area.

Q: Name two species that inhabit the diverse ecosystem of the Amazon Rainforest.

A: Two species that inhabit the Amazon Rainforest are the jaguar and the macaw.

Q: What are the main causes of deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest?

A: The main causes of deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest include commercial farming, subsistence farming, logging, road building, mineral extraction, energy developments, and settlements.

Q: What are the significant impacts of deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest?

A: The impacts of deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest include economic development, soil erosion, and contribution to climate change.

Q: Why is it crucial to preserve the Amazon Rainforest?

A: It is crucial to preserve the Amazon Rainforest due to its global significance and its essential role in stabilizing the local and global climate.

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Sustainable Management of the Amazon Rainforest

The Amazon rainforest is located in the north of South America, spanning an area of around 8 million km2 including parts of Brazil, Columbia, Peru, Venezuela, Ecuador Bolivia, Suriname, Guyana and French Guyana.

In some areas of the Amazon rainforest, sustainable management strategies are in place to ensure people today can get the resources they need in a way that ensures future generations can also benefit from the ecosystem .

Sustainable management strategies are affected by political and economic factors .

Governance 

Governance relates to control of rainforests and who has a say in how rainforests are used. In some areas, rainforests are protected by national and international laws.

In Brazil, the largest protected area of rainforest is the Central Amazon Conservation Complex (CACC) . The CACC covers 60000 km2 as is classified as a World Heritage Site by the United Nations, which means it is protected by international treaties. Limits are placed on hunting , logging and fishing and access is limited.

Central Amazon Conservation Complex (CACC)

In other areas local communities, with the help of NGOs, are involved in rainforest governance. In Columbia, an organisation known as Natütama is working with the local community in Puerto Nariño to protect river species such as the Amazon River dolphin. Local people are employed to teach members of the community on how to protect habitats and endangered river species. Local fishermen collect information about the number and distribution of species and report illegal hunting.

Commodity Value

Commodity value means assigning a value to different good and services in a rainforest. Sustainable management ensures rainforests are worth. more than the value of the timber and other resources that can be extracted, such as gold. An example of this is sustainable foresty, which balances the removal of trees to sell with the conservation of the forest.

Selective logging involves only removing a small number of trees, allowing the forest to regenerate naturally. This saves money in the long run as logging companies do not need to replace felled trees.

Sustainable logging companies such as Precious Woods Amazon place limits on the number of trees being cut down so the rainforest can recover. They also use a range of species so that none are over-exploited.

International agreements try to reduce illegal logging and ensure timber comes from sustainable sources. The Forestry Stewardship Council allows the use of its logo by companies that operate in a sustainable way so consumers know they are buying sustainable timber.

FSC certified wood

Ecotourism is a type of tourism that minimises damage to the environment and benefits local people.

An example of an ecotourism project is the Yachana Lodge in Equador. It is located in a remote area of the Amazon Rainforest where local people rely on subsistence farming.

Yachana Lodge

The project employs local people. This provides a reliable source of income and a better quality of life. The project encourages local people to use the rainforest in a sustainable way so tourists continue to visit.

Volunteers work with local Amazon youth who study at the Yachana Technical High School where learning is focused on five main areas:

• Rainforest conservation
• Sustainable agriculture
• Renewable energy
• Animal husbandry
• Micro-enterprise development .

Tourists are only allowed to visit in small groups, minimising their impact on the environment. Tourists take part in activities that help raise awareness of conservation issues.

Entrance fees are paid by the tourists which are invested in conservation and education projects.

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CASE STUDY: The Amazon Rainforest

• Created by: kclark_23
• Created on: 15-03-20 09:49

Between 50 - 60% of precipitation is recyled in the Amazon by evapotranspiration

NPP is high - averaging 2500grams/m^2/year and the biomass is between 400 and 700 tonnes/ha

Rainforest absorbs 2.4 billion tonnes of carbon a year 

Carbon exchanges are rapid: 

• warm humid conditions = speedy decomposition od dead organic matter and quick release of CO2. 
• rates of carbon fixation through photosynthesis are high

Amazon's leached and acidic soils contain only limited carbon and nutrient stores. The fact that such poor soils support a biome with the highest NPP and biomass of all terrestrial ecosystems suggests the speed with which organic matter is decomposed, mineralised and recycled. 

Physical factors affecting the water cycle

• geology, relief and temp affect flows and stores of water
• impermeable catchments have minimal water storage capacity resulting in rapid run-off. Permeable and porous rocks e.g. limestone and sandstone dtore rainwater and slow runoff
• Most of the Amazon is lowlands
• areas of gentle relief water moves across the surface (overland flow) or horizontally through the soil (throughflow) to streams and rivers
• In the west, the Andes creates steep catchments with rapid runoff 
• Widespread inundation across floodplains such as the Pantanal) occurs annually, storing water for several months and slowing its movement into rivers

Temperature

• high temperatures = high rates of evapotranspiration 
• convection is strong = high atmospheric fluidity, thunderstorm clouds and intense precipitation

Physical factors affecting the carbon cycle

• forest trees dominate the Amazon's principle carbon store
• approx. 100 billion tonnes of carbon is locked up in the Amazon rainforest 
• absorbs 2.4 billion and releases 1.7 billion through decomposition 
• Earth's Life Support Systems

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Case Study: The Amazon Rainforest

The amazon in context.

Tropical rainforests are often considered to be the “cradles of biodiversity.” Though they cover only about 6% of the Earth’s land surface, they are home to over 50% of global biodiversity. Rainforests also take in massive amounts of carbon dioxide and release oxygen through photosynthesis, which has also given them the nickname “lungs of the planet.” They also store very large amounts of carbon, and so cutting and burning their biomass contributes to global climate change. Many modern medicines are derived from rainforest plants, and several very important food crops originated in the rainforest, including bananas, mangos, chocolate, coffee, and sugar cane.

In order to qualify as a tropical rainforest, an area must receive over 250 centimeters of rainfall each year and have an average temperature above 24 degrees centigrade, as well as never experience frosts. The Amazon rainforest in South America is the largest in the world. The second largest is the Congo in central Africa, and other important rainforests can be found in Central America, the Caribbean, and Southeast Asia. Brazil contains about 40% of the world’s remaining tropical rainforest. Its rainforest covers an area of land about 2/3 the size of the continental United States.

There are countless reasons, both anthropocentric and ecocentric, to value rainforests. But they are one of the most threatened types of ecosystems in the world today. It’s somewhat difficult to estimate how quickly rainforests are being cut down, but estimates range from between 50,000 and 170,000 square kilometers per year. Even the most conservative estimates project that if we keep cutting down rainforests as we are today, within about 100 years there will be none left.

How does a rainforest work?

Rainforests are incredibly complex ecosystems, but understanding a few basics about their ecology will help us understand why clear-cutting and fragmentation are such destructive activities for rainforest biodiversity.

High biodiversity in tropical rainforests means that the interrelationships between organisms are very complex. A single tree may house more than 40 different ant species, each of which has a different ecological function and may alter the habitat in distinct and important ways. Ecologists debate about whether systems that have high biodiversity are stable and resilient, like a spider web composed of many strong individual strands, or fragile, like a house of cards. Both metaphors are likely appropriate in some cases. One thing we can be certain of is that it is very difficult in a rainforest system, as in most other ecosystems, to affect just one type of organism. Also, clear cutting one small area may damage hundreds or thousands of established species interactions that reach beyond the cleared area.

Pollination is a challenge for rainforest trees because there are so many different species, unlike forests in the temperate regions that are often dominated by less than a dozen tree species. One solution is for individual trees to grow close together, making pollination simpler, but this can make that species vulnerable to extinction if the one area where it lives is clear cut. Another strategy is to develop a mutualistic relationship with a long-distance pollinator, like a specific bee or hummingbird species. These pollinators develop mental maps of where each tree of a particular species is located and then travel between them on a sort of “trap-line” that allows trees to pollinate each other. One problem is that if a forest is fragmented then these trap-line connections can be disrupted, and so trees can fail to be pollinated and reproduce even if they haven’t been cut.

The quality of rainforest soils is perhaps the most surprising aspect of their ecology. We might expect a lush rainforest to grow from incredibly rich, fertile soils, but actually, the opposite is true. While some rainforest soils that are derived from volcanic ash or from river deposits can be quite fertile, generally rainforest soils are very poor in nutrients and organic matter. Rainforests hold most of their nutrients in their live vegetation, not in the soil. Their soils do not maintain nutrients very well either, which means that existing nutrients quickly “leech” out, being carried away by water as it percolates through the soil. Also, soils in rainforests tend to be acidic, which means that it’s difficult for plants to access even the few existing nutrients. The section on slash and burn agriculture in the previous module describes some of the challenges that farmers face when they attempt to grow crops on tropical rainforest soils, but perhaps the most important lesson is that once a rainforest is cut down and cleared away, very little fertility is left to help a forest regrow.

What is driving deforestation in the Amazon?

Many factors contribute to tropical deforestation, but consider this typical set of circumstances and processes that result in rapid and unsustainable rates of deforestation. This story fits well with the historical experience of Brazil and other countries with territory in the Amazon Basin.

Population growth and poverty encourage poor farmers to clear new areas of rainforest, and their efforts are further exacerbated by government policies that permit landless peasants to establish legal title to land that they have cleared.

At the same time, international lending institutions like the World Bank provide money to the national government for large-scale projects like mining, construction of dams, new roads, and other infrastructure that directly reduces the forest or makes it easier for farmers to access new areas to clear.

The activities most often encouraging new road development are timber harvesting and mining. Loggers cut out the best timber for domestic use or export, and in the process knock over many other less valuable trees. Those trees are eventually cleared and used for wood pulp, or burned, and the area is converted into cattle pastures. After a few years, the vegetation is sufficiently degraded to make it not profitable to raise cattle, and the land is sold to poor farmers seeking out a subsistence living.

Regardless of how poor farmers get their land, they often are only able to gain a few years of decent crop yields before the poor quality of the soil overwhelms their efforts, and then they are forced to move on to another plot of land. Small-scale farmers also hunt for meat in the remaining fragmented forest areas, which reduces the biodiversity in those areas as well.

Another important factor not mentioned in the scenario above is the clearing of rainforest for industrial agriculture plantations of bananas, pineapples, and sugar cane. These crops are primarily grown for export, and so an additional driver to consider is consumer demand for these crops in countries like the United States.

These cycles of land use, which are driven by poverty and population growth as well as government policies, have led to the rapid loss of tropical rainforests. What is lost in many cases is not simply biodiversity, but also valuable renewable resources that could sustain many generations of humans to come. Efforts to protect rainforests and other areas of high biodiversity is the topic of the next section.

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Amazon rainforest stores carbon for the world, but this carbon sink is at risk, a study finds

FILE - Workers stand atop a tower that will spray carbon dioxide into the rainforest north of Manaus, Brazil, May 23, 2023. (AP Photo/Fernando Crispim, File)

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BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) — The Amazon rainforest stores the equivalent of almost two years of global carbon emissions, but its role as a carbon sink is under threat, according to a study released Monday.

The U.S. nonprofit Amazon Conservation used satellite data provided by the Planet company to calculate how much climate-changing carbon the Amazon forest stores. An analysis of the data concluded that with deforestation there’s a danger the Amazon could start contributing more carbon than it absorbs from the atmosphere.

Researchers found Amazon trees held 56.8 billion metric tons of carbon above ground in 2022. They said that’s 64.7 million metric tons more than in 2013, making the Amazon a carbon sink over the last decade.

But it´s now a “very small buffer,” according to an analysis by Planet. “There’s reason to worry that the biome could flip from sink to source with ongoing deforestation.”

Clearing vegetation eliminates trees that absorb carbon. Cutting and burning them puts more carbon into the atmosphere. And cleared land often is used for farming and livestock grazing that produce greenhouse gases.

David Lapola , a professor at the State University of Campinas who was not part of the study, told The Associated Press the findings are consistent with other studies.

While overall carbon absorption in the Amazon basin remains positive when considering only intact areas, the inclusion of forest degradation changes the picture, Lapola said.

However, he added that deforestation, which has destroyed roughly 20% of the Amazon, is an easier problem to solve than the impact of climate change on the rainforest, which is struggling with a severe drought for the second year in a row.

“It is crucial to turn our attention to how climate change and extreme weather events could alter the carbon sink in untouched forests,” Lapola said. “This is considerably more difficult to address as it involves a concerted effort to reduce greenhouse emission.”

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org .

How Close Are the Planet’s Climate Tipping Points?

Earth’s warming could trigger sweeping changes in the natural world that would be hard, if not impossible, to reverse.

By Raymond Zhong and Mira Rojanasakul

Right now, every moment of every day, we humans are reconfiguring Earth’s climate bit by bit. Hotter summers and wetter storms. Higher seas and fiercer wildfires. The steady, upward turn of the dial on a host of threats to our homes, our societies and the environment around us.

We might also be changing the climate in an even bigger way.

For the past two decades, scientists have been raising alarms about great systems in the natural world that warming, caused by carbon emissions, might be pushing toward collapse. These systems are so vast that they can stay somewhat in balance even as temperatures rise. But only to a point.

Once we warm the planet beyond certain levels, this balance might be lost, scientists say. The effects would be sweeping and hard to reverse. Not like the turning of a dial, but the flipping of a switch. One that wouldn’t be easily flipped back.

Mass Death of Coral Reefs

Tipping point possible

Degrees of warming

When corals go ghostly white, they aren’t necessarily dead, and their reefs aren’t necessarily gone forever. Too much heat in the water causes the corals to expel the symbiotic algae living inside their tissues. If conditions improve, they can survive this bleaching. In time, the reefs can bounce back. As the world gets warmer, though, occasional bleaching is becoming regular bleaching. Mild bleaching is becoming severe bleaching.

Scientists’ latest predictions are grim. Even if humanity moves swiftly to rein in global warming, 70 percent to 90 percent of today’s reef-building corals could die in the coming decades. If we don’t, the toll could be 99 percent or more. A reef can look healthy right up until its corals start bleaching and dying. Eventually, it is a graveyard.

This doesn’t necessarily mean reef-building corals will go extinct. Hardier ones might endure in pockets. But the vibrant ecosystems these creatures support will be unrecognizable. There is no bouncing back anytime soon, not in the places corals live today, not at any scale.

When it might happen: It could already be underway.

Abrupt Thawing of Permafrost

In the ground beneath the world’s cold places , the accumulated remains of long-dead plants and animals contain a lot of carbon, roughly twice the amount that’s currently in the atmosphere. As heat, wildfires and rains thaw and destabilize the frozen ground, microbes get to work, converting this carbon into carbon dioxide and methane. These greenhouse gasses worsen the heat and the fire and the rain, which intensifies the thawing.

Like many of these vast, self-propelling shifts in our climate, permafrost thaw is complicated to predict. Large areas have already come unfrozen, in Western Canada, in Alaska, in Siberia. But how quickly the rest of it might defrost, how much that would add to global warming, how much of the carbon might stay trapped down there because the thawing causes new vegetation to sprout up on top of it — all of that is tricky to pin down.

“Because these things are very uncertain, there’s a bias toward not talking about it or dismissing the possibility, even,” said Tapio Schneider, a climate scientist at the California Institute of Technology. “That, I think, is a mistake,” he said. “It’s still important to explore the risks, even if the probability of occurrence in the near future is relatively small.”

When it might happen: The timing will vary place to place. The effects on global warming could accumulate over a century or more.

Collapse of Greenland Ice

The colossal ice sheets that blanket Earth’s poles aren’t melting the way an ice cube melts. Because of their sheer bigness and geometric complexity, a host of factors shapes how quickly the ice sheds its bulk and adds to the rising oceans. Among these factors, scientists are particularly concerned about ones that could start feeding on themselves, causing the melting to accelerate in a way that would be very hard to stop.

In Greenland, the issue is elevation. As the surface of the ice loses height, more of it sits at a balmier altitude, exposed to warmer air. That makes it melt even faster.

Scientists know, from geological evidence, that large parts of Greenland have been ice-free before. They also know that the consequences of another great melt could reverberate worldwide, affecting ocean currents and rainfall down into the tropics and beyond.

When it might happen: Irreversible melting could begin this century and unfold over hundreds, even thousands, of years.

Breakup of West Antarctic Ice

At the other end of the world from Greenland, the ice of western Antarctica is threatened less by warm air than by warm water.

Many West Antarctic glaciers flow out to sea, which means their undersides are exposed to constant bathing by ocean currents. As the water warms, these floating ice shelves melt and weaken from below, particularly where they sit on the seafloor. Like a dancer holding a difficult pose, the shelf starts to lose its footing. With less floating ice to hold it back, more ice from the continent’s interior would slide into the ocean. Eventually, the ice at the water’s edge might fail to support its own weight and crack into pieces.

The West Antarctic ice sheet has probably collapsed before, in Earth’s deep past. How close today’s ice is to suffering the same fate is something scientists are still trying to figure out.

“If you think about the future of the world’s coastlines, 50 percent of the story is going to be the melt of Antarctica,” said David Holland, a New York University scientist who studies polar regions. And yet, he said, when it comes to understanding how the continent’s ice might break apart, “we are at Day Zero.”

When it might happen: As in Greenland, the ice sheet could begin to recede irreversibly in this century.

Sudden Shift in the West African Monsoon

Around 15,000 years ago, the Sahara started turning green. It began when small shifts in Earth’s orbit caused North Africa to be sunnier each summer. This warmed the land, causing the winds to shift and draw in more moist air from over the Atlantic. The moisture fell as monsoon rain, which fed grasses and filled lakes, some as large as the Caspian Sea. Animals flourished: elephants, giraffes, ancestral cattle. So did humans, as engravings and rock paintings from the era attest. Only about 5,000 years ago did the region transform back into the harsh desert we know today.

Scientists now understand that the Sahara has flipped several times over the ages between arid and humid, between barren and temperate. They are less sure about how, and whether, the West African monsoon might shift or intensify in response to today’s warming. (Despite its name, the region’s monsoon unleashes rain over parts of East Africa as well.)

Whatever happens will matter hugely to an area of the world where many people’s nutrition and livelihoods depend on the skies.

When it might happen: Hard to predict.

Loss of Amazon Rainforest

Besides being home to hundreds of Indigenous communities, millions of animal and plant species and 400 billion trees; besides containing untold numbers of other living things that have yet to be discovered, named and described; and besides storing an abundance of carbon that might otherwise be warming the planet, the Amazon rainforest plays another big role. It is a living, churning, breathing engine of weather.

The combined exhalations of all those trees give rise to clouds fat with moisture. When this moisture falls, it helps keep the region lush and forested.

Now, though, ranchers and farmers are clearing the trees, and global warming is worsening wildfires and droughts. Scientists worry that once too much more of the forest is gone, this rain machine could break down, causing the rest of the forest to wither and degrade into grassy savanna.

By 2050, as much as half of today’s Amazon forest could be at risk of undergoing this kind of degradation, researchers recently estimated.

When it might happen: Will depend on how rapidly people clear, or protect, the remaining forest.

Shutdown of Atlantic Currents

Sweeping across the Atlantic Ocean, from the western coasts of Africa, round through the Caribbean and up toward Europe before heading down again, a colossal loop of seawater sets temperatures and rainfall for a big part of the globe. Saltier, denser water sinks to the ocean depths while fresher, lighter water rises, keeping this conveyor belt turning.

Now, though, Greenland’s melting ice is upsetting this balance by infusing the North Atlantic with immense new flows of freshwater. Scientists fear that if the motor slows too much, it could stall, upending weather patterns for billions of people in Europe and the tropics.

Scientists have already seen signs of a slowdown in these currents, which go by an unwieldy name: the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC. The hard part is predicting when a slowdown might become a shutdown. At the moment, our data and records are just too limited, said Niklas Boers, a climate scientist at the Technical University of Munich and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

Already, though, we know enough to be sure about one thing, Dr. Boers said. “With every gram of additional CO2 in the atmosphere, we are increasing the likelihood of tipping events,” he said. “The longer we wait” to slash emissions, he said, “the farther we go into dangerous territory.”

When it might happen: Very hard to predict.

Read More on Earth’s Tipping Points

Heat Raises Fears of ‘Demise’ for Great Barrier Reef Within a Generation

A new study found that temperatures in the Coral Sea have reached their highest levels in at least four centuries.

By Catrin Einhorn

A Collapse of the Amazon Could Be Coming ‘Faster Than We Thought’

A new study weighed a range of threats and variables in an effort to map out where the rainforest is most vulnerable.

By Manuela Andreoni

In the Atlantic Ocean, Subtle Shifts Hint at Dramatic Dangers

A warming atmosphere is causing a branch of the ocean’s powerful Gulf Stream to weaken, some scientists fear.

By Moises Velasquez-Manoff and Jeremy White

How Much Ice Is Greenland Losing? Researchers Found an Answer.

The island is shedding 20 percent more than previously estimated, a study found, potentially threatening ocean currents that help to regulate global temperatures.

By Delger Erdenesanaa

Rapid Antarctic Melting Looks Certain, Even if Emissions Goals Are Met

It may be too late to halt the decline of the West Antarctic ice shelves, a study found, but climate action could still forestall the gravest sea level rise.

By Raymond Zhong

Methodology

The range of warming levels at which each tipping point might potentially be triggered is from David I. Armstrong McKay et al., Science .

The shaded areas on the maps show the present-day extent of relevant areas for each natural system. They don’t necessarily indicate precisely where large-scale changes could occur if a tipping point is reached.

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A Level; case study of a rainforest - The Amazon

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12 January 2021

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A Level; case study of a rainforest - water cycle in the Amazon

A Level; case study of a rainforest - human factors affecting water and carbon cycles

A Level; case study of a rainforest - impacts of management on water and carbon cycles

This bundle is a series of lessons designed to teach students about the water and carbon cycles in the rainforest, the natural and human impacts on these cycles and the way in which the impacts can be managed. It is designed to accompany the new A Level syllabi

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Logging done sustainably doesn’t have to harm ecosystem services, study finds

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• A new study finds that low-intensity logging doesn’t negatively affect a forest’s key ecosystem services such as carbon storage and food availability.
• The study, focused on a selective-logging concession in Gabon, concluded that tree removal rates weren’t high enough to make a dent in ecosystem services.
• Researchers found that while even low-intensity logging did have some impacts on plant diversity, these remained small and largely dissipated in about a decade.
• Experts says forest nations should strive to be “high forest, low deforestation” (HFLD) nations, like Gabon, for which the defined threshold is at least 50% forest cover and less than 0.22% annual deforestation rate.

Researchers have found that low-intensity logging of a tropical forest has no negative impacts on key ecosystem services such as the carbon storage and food availability for wildlife. But even at a small scale, selective logging can still effect changes in an area’s plant diversity, the researchers wrote in their recently published study .

“We wanted to study a ‘best-case scenario’ type of selective logging that could serve as a model if it does help minimize environmental damage in the selective logging industry,” study lead author Megan K. Sullivan, from Yale University’s School of the Environment, told Mongabay.

Sullivan and her team carried out their research at a logging concession in northwestern Gabon, east of Monts de Cristal National Park. The site was run by SEEF, a local subsidiary of French, timber producer and trader F. Jammes. According to Sullivan, the scientists “assessed how very low-intensity selective logging impacted the species and functional composition of seedlings, saplings, and adults.”

Their findings indicate that forest areas logged at very low intensity — at a rate of 0.82-1.6 trees per hectare (0.33-0.65 trees per acre) for the SEEF concession — can act as wildlife corridors to supplement or connect protected areas. The concept of corridors is promoted by the recent U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity’s recognition of “ other effective area-based conservation measures. ”

“If managed well, low-intensity, selectively logged forests can be seen as a middle path between strictly protected areas and intensive land use,” Sullivan said.

The study concluded that “ecosystem services such as carbon storage, seed dispersal, and animal food availability may not be negatively affected simply because very low-intensity selective logging removes so few trees.”

However, the researchers also found that even this best-case logging scenario wasn’t entirely benign.

“We found that logging caused some shifts in the species and functional composition of the forest understory, likely due to the environmental changes in the understory that impact regeneration. However, these shifts were small and not always in the expected direction, likely due to the low removal rates of adult trees,” Sullivan said. “These changes appeared to last up to 10 years post-logging, where they were detected in the sapling life stage of the forest.”

Sullivan said this research was a shift from a situation where law and policies are ignored by loggers, to one where managers strived to follow evidence-based practices to promote sustainability and minimize environmental damage.

The scientists chose Gabon due to its leadership in forestry sustainability, where policies and international partnerships have sought to improve environmental protection. The country made headlines in 2019 as the first African nation to receive payment through REDD+, a payment scheme for reducing emissions by keeping forests standing.

Sullivan said that since the completion of their study, the Gabonese government has begun transitioning to a digital timber tracking system, the National Traceability System of Wood from Gabon, or SNTBG, to mitigate corruption in the forestry industry. She said she’s hopeful that changes to monitoring and enforcement in the timber sector will continue to be developed in Gabon.

Replicating results across Central Africa

Guy Beloune, a forestry expert and senior technical assistant for forest certification at Global Forest Environment Consulting (GFEC) in Gabon, told Mongabay the results of this study are encouraging, adding that while this research can be generalized across Central Africa to a certain extent, researchers should remain cautious.

“It is possible that by limiting this study to SEEF, it was not possible to take into account all the biodiversity characteristics of the tropical forests of Central Africa, and this may pose a problem of the representativeness of the study at the Central African level,” Beloune said, noting that logging practices can vary considerably from one company to another.

Still, he said there’s been progress in Central Africa in terms of logging regulations.

“The governments of all these countries have opted for forest management plans with rotations of between 20 and 30 years, thus facilitating the natural regeneration of plant species and the restoration of the ecosystem functions of forests,” Beloune said. “Several countries have also adopted reduced impact logging [RIL] methods for felling, skidding, road building.”

In the case of Cameroon, he said, forest management units and communal forests are generally managed sustainably. However, other logging operations, such as short-term logging and logging on private or government lands, make it difficult to guarantee sustainable management or maintaining forest ecosystem functions. These logging methods can have negative impacts on the forest ecosystem, especially if illegal logging plays a role.

Beloune said regulations and companies should take into account local differences in biodiversity, geology and logging practices that can considerably modify the species composition and ecosystem services in Central Africa. He added that logging practices should be sustainable and regulated to protect forests and their ecosystem services.

The study’s authors recommend further research on the regeneration requirements of timber species to better understand how to successfully manage timber stocks in the long term and determine the direct impacts of low-intensity selective logging on wildlife.

One concern, according to Sullivan, even in low-intensity logging is a potential rise in bushmeat hunting or poaching.

“Excessive hunting in newly-opened forest areas can lead to ‘empty forest syndrome,’ where the forest still stands but the wildlife that depends on it is missing,” Sullivan says.

Gabon has policies in place designed to help deter hunting activities, such as closing logging roads after logging, which helps deter hunting while boosting tree regeneration. Another incentive is providing non-bushmeat protein in shops at affordable prices for the families in the logging concessions, according to Sullivan.

Sullivan said the findings shouldn’t form the basis for evaluating all the impacts of industry or land use. She said it’s simply not possible to include all circumstances, organisms or contexts in a single research study.

She pointed to another study that indicated that high-conservation-priority megafauna, such as elephants and gorillas, occurred more often in concessions certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. FSC certification, Sullivan said, supports another kind of best-case scenario for selective logging, and has made progress in minimizing negative environmental impacts. However, some NGOs, such as Greenpeace, have frequently criticized the FSC.

For governments in the region, there are many aspects to consider when looking at the forestry industry and talking about sustainability, such as ecological factors — but also economic, political, and social ones. In this complicated landscape, it’s especially critical to highlight the best-practice logging scenarios that have led to some countries being dubbed “high forest, low deforestation” (HFLD) nations, according to Sullivan. HFLD means a nation has at least 50% forest cover with a deforestation rate not exceeding 0.22% annually. Sullivan said HFLD is a road map for the future of forest conservation in the region.

“It’s important to highlight these ‘best-case scenarios’ as models to strive to minimize environmental damage while developing economic activities,” she said.

Banner image: Prince Bissiemou measures a tree in a logged forest in Gabon. Image by Megan Sullivan.

Sullivan, M. K., Vleminckx, J., Bissiemou, P. A. M., Niangadouma, R., Mayoungou, M. I., Temba, J. L., … Comita, L. S. (2024). Low-intensity logging alters species and functional composition, but does not negatively impact key ecosystem services in a Central African tropical forest. Global Ecology and Conservation, 53, e02996. doi: 10.1016/j.gecco.2024.e02996

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