Table of Contents
- The Amazon forests in South America, which are the largest tropical forests in the world, have started emitting carbon dioxide (CO2)instead of absorbing carbon emissions.
- In a study published in the journal Nature, scientists who conducted this research over a period of nine years in the eastern Amazon forests have said that a significant amount of deforestation in eastern and southeastern Brazil has turned the forest into a source of CO2 that has the ability to warm the planet.
- Not only the Amazon rainforests, some forests in Southeast Asia have also turned into carbon sources in the last few years as a result of formation of plantations and fires.
The Amazon Basin
- The Amazon basin is huge with an area covering over 6 million square kilometres, it is nearly twice the size of India.
- The Amazon rainforests cover about 80 per cent of the basin and as per NASA’s Earth observatory, they are home to nearly a fifth of the world’s land species and is also home to about 30 million people including hundreds of indigenous groups and several isolated tribes.
Importance
- The Amazon rainforest plays an important part in regulating the world’s oxygen and carbon cycles.
- It produces roughly six percent of the world’s oxygen and has long been thought to act as a carbon sink, meaning it readily absorbs large amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
- Amazon basin produces about 20 per cent of the world’s flow of freshwater into the oceans.
- But when trees are logged and the forest is burned, that carbon is released into the atmosphere at alarming rates.
- Recent research has suggested that these forests might actually be emitting more carbon dioxide than they’re absorbing.
- Luckily, if we’re able to conserve large parts of the fragile ecosystem, scientists believe we may be able to restore its status as a carbon sink.
- Over the last few years, the forest has been under threat due to deforestation and burning. In 2019, fires in the Amazon were visible from space. Forest fires, according to Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE), have doubled since 2013.
Reason of this fire
- One reason that they happen is farmers burn their land to clear it for the next crop. An editorial published in the journal Science Advances in 2019 noted that “the precious Amazon is teetering on the edge of functional destruction and, with it, so are we”.
Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon
- Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, which comprises about two-thirds of the area of the rainforest, started in the 1970s and 1980s when large-scale forest conversion for cattle ranching and soy cultivation began.
- State policies that encourage economic development, such as railway and road expansion projects have led to “unintentional deforestation” in the Amazon and Central America.
Findings of the research
- The eastern Amazon forests are no longer carbon sinks, whereas the more intact and wetter forests in the central and western parts are neither carbon sinks nor are they emitters.
- For the eastern region not being able to absorb as much CO2 as it did previously is the conversion of forests into agricultural land, which has caused a 17 per cent decrease in the forest cover, an area that is almost the size of continental US.
- In the southeast region, which forms about 20% of the Amazon basin and has experienced about 30% of the deforestation in the last four decades, scientists have recorded a 25% reduction in precipitation and a temperature increase of at least 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit or 1.5 degrees Celsius during the dry months of August, September and October.
Way Forward
- The ability of tropical forests to act as carbon sinks is to be maintained.
- Fossil fuel emissions need to be reduced.
- Temperature increases need to be limited as well.
Question:
Which one among the following rivers is the longest?[PYQ]
(a)Amazon
(b)Amur
(c)Congo
(d)Lena
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