'Lungs of the Earth' Could Get Pushed to 'Tipping Point'
Published on Monday, April 14, 2014 by Common Dreams
'Lungs of the Earth' Could Get Pushed to 'Tipping Point'
Agribusiness is already fueling fire in the Amazon, and climate change could make fires kill even more trees
- Andrea Germanos, staff writer
Amazon forests — the "lungs of planet earth" — could be pushed towards a "tipping point" as severe droughts converge with fires to bring about massive forest loss, a new study shows.
Climate change will likely increase regional temperatures while decreasing precipitation, and that means an increased likelihood of a perfect storm of conditions for causing massive tree-killing fires.
The team of researchers led by Paulo Brando of the Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazônia, Carnegie Institution for Science and Woods Hole Research Center, did an 8-year study of three 50-hectare forest plots in southeast Amazonia to see how the trees within the plots responded to intentional burns.
One of the plots was left unburned, one was burned every three years, and the third was burned every year.
"Over the course of our experiment, 60 percent of the trees died with combined drought and repeated fire. Our results suggest that a perfect firestorm, caused by drought conditions and previous fire disturbance, crossed a threshold in forest resistance," said study co-author Jennifer Balch, assistant professor of geography at Penn State.
More:
https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2014/04/14-7
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