The Amazon Is Deteriorating Too Fast for Species and the Climate to Adapt
Scientists say the vast rainforest critical to Earth’s biosphere is eroding so quickly that it risks an “irreversible catastrophe.”
Smoke rises as a fire burns in the Amazon rainforest in Rondonia state, Brazil, in August 2019.
Photographer: Leonardo Carrato/BloombergTwo new scientific review articles by international teams of researchers paint a bleak picture of the state of the Amazon rainforest: The critical ecosystem is being damaged at an unprecedented pace, they warn, which may usher in “a qualitatively different global climate regime” with grievous effects on biodiversity and human welfare.
The papers, both published in the peer-reviewed journal Science on Thursday, summarize research on deforestation and landscape degradation in the Amazon to deliver a sharp message. The region that is key to the world’s climate system “is now perched to transition rapidly from a largely forested to a nonforested landscape,” write one set of authors, “and the changes are happening much too rapidly for Amazonian species, peoples, and ecosystems to respond adaptively.”