'A Spiraling Loop of Feedbacks': Worst-Case Scenario for Amazon Rainforest

    A paper to be published in the Journal Science on January 27 has found that humans have degraded more than one-third of the remaining trees in the Amazon rainforest. This degradation could eventually lead to "a spiraling loop of feedbacks," Jos Barlow, a professor of conservation science at Lancaster University in the U.K. and co-author of the paper, told Newsweek.

    Up to 38 percent of the remaining Amazon has been affected by human actions, researchers from Brazil's University of Campinas (Unicamp), the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM), National Institute for Space Research (INPE), and Lancaster University found.

    The degradation of this area-equivalent to 5.5 times the size of the state of California-releases carbon emissions equivalent to or greater than those from deforestation.

    The Amazon contributes 16 percent of all the land-based photosynthesis in the world, and strongly regulates global carbon and water cycles, sucking in carbon dioxide and producing oxygen. Additionally, despite only covering around 0.5 percent of the Earth's surface, the Amazon is home to over 10 percent of all named plant and vertebrate species on Earth.

    "Healthy rainforests provide amazing habitat for biodiversity-this is what the Amazon is most famous for," Sally Thompson, an ecohydrologist at The University of Western Australia, told Newsweek. "They usually support clean water in rivers, make it rain, and cool the surrounding area. You can hunt, harvest timber or foods sustainably from healthy and wellmanaged forests. And a healthy forest can often recover from disturbance. Degraded forests aren't as good at doing any of those things, and often they struggle to recover from disturbance."

    Deforestation involves a loss of the forest canopy and a change in land use (e.g.,from forest to agriculture or urban land use), while degradation is a process affecting the remaining forests. Degradation essentially means that there is still forest in place but it is not as healthy or as good at providing benefits for the environment or for people.

THOMSON, Jess. 'A Spiraling Loop of Feedbacks': Worst-Case Scenario for Amazon Rainforest. Newsweek (online), 26 jan. 2023 (adaptado).