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Amazon rainforest may be more resilient to deforestation than previously thought
http://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2017/may/amazon-rainforest.html[font face=Serif][font size=5]Amazon rainforest may be more resilient to deforestation than previously thought[/font]
Press release issued: 30 May 2017
[font size=4]Taking a fresh look at evidence from satellite data, and using the latest theories from complexity science, researchers at the University of Bristol have provided new evidence to show that the Amazon rainforest is not as fragile as previously thought. The research is published today in Nature Communications.[/font]
[font size=3]The Amazon forest stores about half of the global tropical forest carbon and accounts for about a quarter of carbon absorption from the atmosphere by global forests each year. As a result, large losses of Amazonian forest cover could make global climate change worse.
In the past, researchers have found that a large part of the Amazon forest is susceptible to a tipping point. The tell-tail sign is satellite data showing areas of savannah and rainforest coexisting under the same environmental conditions. Theories from nonlinear dynamics would then suggest that both states are alternative stable outcomes. This so called bistability means that shocks such as forest clearance or drought could lead to a dramatic increase of fire occurrence and tip an area of rainforest into savannah. Areas that have experienced this transition would then remain locked into this savannah state until large enough increases of rainfall and release of human pressures allow forests to regrow faster than they are lost by intermittent fires.
Bert Wuyts, a fourth year PhD student in the Bristol Centre for Complexity Sciences and lead author on the paper, said: “I decided to take a fresh look at the data and a very different picture emerged when I controlled for seasonality and took out all the data points from satellite images that represented locations that had been subjected to human influence. Suddenly the property of bistability disappeared almost completely.”
…[/font][/font]
Press release issued: 30 May 2017
[font size=4]Taking a fresh look at evidence from satellite data, and using the latest theories from complexity science, researchers at the University of Bristol have provided new evidence to show that the Amazon rainforest is not as fragile as previously thought. The research is published today in Nature Communications.[/font]
[font size=3]The Amazon forest stores about half of the global tropical forest carbon and accounts for about a quarter of carbon absorption from the atmosphere by global forests each year. As a result, large losses of Amazonian forest cover could make global climate change worse.
In the past, researchers have found that a large part of the Amazon forest is susceptible to a tipping point. The tell-tail sign is satellite data showing areas of savannah and rainforest coexisting under the same environmental conditions. Theories from nonlinear dynamics would then suggest that both states are alternative stable outcomes. This so called bistability means that shocks such as forest clearance or drought could lead to a dramatic increase of fire occurrence and tip an area of rainforest into savannah. Areas that have experienced this transition would then remain locked into this savannah state until large enough increases of rainfall and release of human pressures allow forests to regrow faster than they are lost by intermittent fires.
Bert Wuyts, a fourth year PhD student in the Bristol Centre for Complexity Sciences and lead author on the paper, said: “I decided to take a fresh look at the data and a very different picture emerged when I controlled for seasonality and took out all the data points from satellite images that represented locations that had been subjected to human influence. Suddenly the property of bistability disappeared almost completely.”
…[/font][/font]
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms15519
