The Amazon rainforest’s trees may soon die off en masse, researchers warn. According to a 20-year satellite study published yesterday (March 7) in Nature Climate Change, the famous forest is exhibiting signs of poor health that could mean large portions of it will become savannah in the near future. Such an ecological shift could happen quickly, Timothy M. Lenton, a coauthor on the study and a director of the Global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter, tells CNN. “My hunch, for what it’s worth, (is that) it could happen in the space of decades.”
“The Amazon is a custodian of biodiversity and possesses a vital ability to pull in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, so it is clearly concerning that its health is deteriorating as human-caused deforestation and climate change metes out increasingly potent and harmful impacts on the ecosystem,” University of Reading climate scientist Richard Allan, who was not involved in the study, says in a statement to the Science Media Centre (SMC).
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