{"id":5250,"date":"2019-12-24T15:33:15","date_gmt":"2019-12-24T10:03:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/?p=5250"},"modified":"2019-12-24T15:33:15","modified_gmt":"2019-12-24T10:03:15","slug":"threat-to-the-amazon-rainforest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/threat-to-the-amazon-rainforest\/","title":{"rendered":"Threat to the Amazon rainforest"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Relevance: Mains: G.S paper III: Environment<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Context:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The researchers Thomas E Lovejoy and Carlos Nobre have said that while 2019 was not the worst year for fire or deforestation in the Amazon.<br \/>\n\u2022 As the world\u2019s largest tropical rainforest the precious Amazon is teetering on the edge of functional destruction and, with it, so are we.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Why is the Amazon rainforest in danger?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The Amazon basin is the world\u2019s largest repository of biodiversity and produces about 20 per cent of the world\u2019s flow of freshwater into the oceans.<br \/>\n\u2022 In the recent few years, the rainforest has been under threat from deforestation and burning.<br \/>\n\u2022 Earlier this year, fires in the Amazon that were visible from space made headlines. According to Brazil\u2019s National Institute for Space Research (INPE), forest fires in the Brazilian part of the rainforests have doubled since 2013.<br \/>\n\u2022 It estimates an increase of over 84 per cent since last year.<br \/>\n\u2022 Until August this year, over 72,000 fires were recorded. June to December is considered to be burning season when farmers want to clear land for farming.<br \/>\n\u2022 Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, which comprises about two-thirds of the area of the rainforest, started in the 1970s and 1980s when large-scale forest conversion for cattle ranching and soy cultivation began.<br \/>\n\u2022 NASA\u2019s Earth Observatory notes that state policies that encourage economic development, such as railway and road expansion projects have led to \u201cunintentional deforestation\u201d in the Amazon and Central America.<br \/>\n\u2022 The forest clearing has been encouraged by agricultural subsidies, timber concessions and tax breaks have encouraged forest clearing in the Amazon.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>What the researchers have said?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The researchers mention that when it rains on the landscape of the Amazon forest, it returns at least 75 per cent of the moisture to the westward-moving air mass.<br \/>\n\u2022 Over the whole Amazon basin, the air rises, cools and precipitates out close to 20 per cent of the world\u2019s river water in the Amazon river system.<br \/>\n\u2022 The moisture of the Amazon is crucial for the continental climate system and has specific benefits for Brazilian agriculture practised in the south.<br \/>\n\u2022 The fact is that every country in South America other than Chile (blocked from this moisture by the Andes) benefits from Amazon moisture.<br \/>\n\u2022 Essentially, when forests are cut, the land is rendered barren, which means that potentially more than 50 per cent of the rainforest runs off and not much water is left for recycling.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Their predictions:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The researchers predict that if the deforestation continues to happen at the going rate, the rainforest, which they have likened in size to that of 48 states of the continental US.<br \/>\n\u2022 This could soon not have enough moisture for the rainforests to sustain, eventually leading to the development of savannahs in the eastern and southern portions of the Amazon.<br \/>\n\u2022 Perhaps extending into central and southwestern areas, because these zones are naturally close to the minimum amount of rainfall required for the rain forest to thrive.<br \/>\n\u2022 The situation may exacerbate further due to \u201cnegative synergies\u201d induced by man-made global warming.<br \/>\n\u2022 In addition, although deforestation anywhere in the Amazon diminishes its hydrological cycle, what happens in the Brazilian Amazon is particularly important because of the sensitivity of that part of the forest to incremental and cumulative impacts of vegetative decline from dieback.<br \/>\n\u2022 The researchers have estimated that 17 per cent of the entire rainforest and about 20 per cent of the Brazilian rainforest has been deforested. They refer to these figures as \u201csubstantial and frightening\u201d.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>What is dieback?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>When the Amazon rainforest reaches its tipping point, which is to say when the level of deforestation has led to there not being enough water for recycling and as result, moisture to induce rainfall, the rainforests will be unable to sustain themselves.<br \/>\n\u2022 This will lead to a situation when the trees, and in turn, the forest will start to \u201cdieback\u201d. In other words, some trees and eventually the forests will reach the physiological limits of dryness probably induced by droughts and heat stress.<br \/>\n\u2022 Because of this dehydration, the affected trees will begin to die from the tip of their leaves or roots backwards.<br \/>\n\u2022 The first time that an Amazon dieback scenario was suggested was in 2000 by Peter M Cox who published his findings about running large-scale computer simulations that showed how forests were affected by a changing climate scenario throughout the 21st century.<br \/>\n\u2022 As per Cox\u2019s analysis, forests would continue to take up carbon until about 2050, post which, warmer temperatures and water-related stress could cause dieback of the Amazon rainforest.<br \/>\n\u2022 Essentially this means that instead of being a carbon sink, the rainforest would start emitting carbon.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Way forward:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Through reforestation, Brazil should help to reach its goals under the Paris Agreement and a \u201cnew vision\u201d for the Amazon must be created by the citizens and leaders of South America and the world, they say.<br \/>\n\u2022 The tipping point is here, it is now. The peoples and leaders of the Amazon countries together have the power, the science, and the tools to avoid a continental-scale, indeed, a global environmental disaster.<br \/>\n\u2022 Together, we need the will and imagination to tip the direction of change in favor of a sustainable Amazon.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Relevance: Mains: G.S paper III: Environment Context: The researchers Thomas E Lovejoy and Carlos Nobre have said that while 2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3260,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[123,42],"tags":[392],"class_list":["post-5250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-current-affairs","category-general-studies-iii-technology-economic-development-bio-diversity-environment-security-and-disaster-management","tag-union-public-service-commission-upsc"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5250"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5250\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5251,"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5250\/revisions\/5251"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}