How Climate Change Will Impact the Amazon Rainforest in the Future

What will happen to the Amazon in the future? Scientists have taken a closer look at how climate change may affect the Amazon forest, and whether it will turn forest into savanna.

In this latest study, the researchers used a new, advanced ecosystem model, named Ecosystem Demography, or ED2. While earlier studies had predicted longer and more intense dry seasons in the Amazon as a result of climate change, the effect on forests had been unclear.

"In earlier approaches, they use an aggregated representation of the ecosystem," said Paul Moorcroft, senior author of the new study, in a news release. "One way to think about it is they're modeling an average tropical tree in an average tropical environment. But because of that, when the system responds, it all responds at once, because it's essentially all the same. In reality, ecosystems have a variety of individual plants, with different plants in different locations. Our approach is to capture that heterogeneity, and what we were able to show is that...this predicts a more graded response to climate change."

So what did they find? The new analysis predicted that as climate changes, the ecosystem will respond almost immediately. However, those changes will be less drastic, so in some sense it says that the ecosystem is both more vulnerable and more resilient.

The findings mean that changes in the forest are already occurring. These changes could have impacts on everything from rainfall in the region to biodiversity.

The findings are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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