Amazon Rainforest in Danger from Multiple Environmental Hits: Greater Risk to Tropical Forests

Amazonian forests may be in more trouble than we thought. One of the world's longest-running ecological studies has found that these forests are being altered by multiple environmental threats, which means that there may be even greater danger for the world's largest rainforest.

For the past 35 years, researchers have studied how diverse communities of trees and vines respond when the Amazonian rainforest is fragmented due to cattle ranching. Essentially, ranchers create plots of cleared area for their cattle. This interrupts the forest around the plots and can affect the species and ecosystems within the nearby forest. The researchers found out that the fragmented forests change rapidly.

"Lots of trees have died while vines, which favor disturbed forests, proliferate rapidly," said Jose Luis Camargo, one of the researchers, in a news release.

That's not all that the scientists found, though. It turns out that nearby, undisturbed forests also changed; trees grew faster and died faster, and the vines also multiplied.

"These changes might be driven by increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere," said Thomas Lovejoy, one of the researchers, in a news release. "Plants use carbon dioxide for photosynthesis and when it increases, the forest evidently becomes more unstable and dynamic, as long as the soils have enough nutrients."

The findings reveal that habitat fragmentation could greatly impact these forests. Not only that, but global-scale changes, like rising carbon dioxide and climate change, could also spell problems for the Amazon.

"A big implication is that it's going to be harder to predict future changes to ecosystems if they're being affected by several environmental drivers," said Lovejoy in a news release.

The findings reveal that it's not just one thing that's affecting Amazon rainforests; it's many factors. Officials need to take all of these impacts into account when designing ways to protect these biodiverse areas in the future.