In the Amazon rainforest, for every three trees that die due to drought, a fourth tree dies as well, even if it is not directly impacted. That’s what recent research discovered.
As climate change causes increasingly frequent and severe dry periods in the Amazon Basin, the rainforest in South America may lose its rain and, with it, its moisture(水分) supply. The forest is threatened by a lack of rain because it breathes water: when it rains, the soil absorbs as much as the plants, and both release a large quantity back via evaporation and transpiration. The forest creates most of its own weather through this atmospheric(大气的) moisture recycling, generating up to half of the rainfall in the Amazon Basin. And, although it is incredibly effective, the moisture recycling system ultimately depends on how much water is initially put into the system. A lack of rain reduces the amount of water recycled, and there will be less rainfall in neighboring areas, placing even more sections of the forest under serious stress.
Climate science predicts that what used to be extraordinarily dry years may well become the new normal. These frequent droughts are already producing quantifiable(可量化的) changes to the Amazon’s moisture network. Scientists use these observations to understand and model the consequences of a future climate. But droughts have different effects on forest systems within the Amazon. Trees and forest systems there differently adapted to water availability, as some regions commonly exhibit a distinct dry season while others have rain all year round. Even the dry season-adapted parts of the Amazon forest won’t necessarily survive a new climate normal, and the risk of becoming savannah(稀树草原) or no trees at all is high. The consequences for biodiversity would be disastrous, but the same goes for the local, regional, and global climate.
Yet not all is lost. And there is still a lot we can do to try and stabilize the Amazon and we know how we can do that: by protecting the rainforest from logging, and by rapidly reducing greenhouse gas emissions to limit further global warming.
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