As a result of the climate crisis and logging, Amazon is on the verge of turning from a canopy rainforest to Savannah with few trees and open grasslands.
Researchers have warned that rainforests are sensitive to changes in moisture levels, rainfalls, fires, and droughts. With the change in weather fluctuating the moisture level, droughts, and bush fires, Amazon is losing its green lives like ever before. These devastating results were predicted to happen but were estimated to affect the ecosystem decades away from now.
The tipping point however is predicted to arrive much sooner. According to a study published in the journal Nature communications almost over 40 percent of the Amazon rainforest is on the verge of changing into vast barren grasslands.
Amazon holds a vast range of species and plays a greater role in absorbing carbon dioxide and providing the fresh oxygen we breathe in.
With major parts of the Amazon receiving very little rainfall over the years, the changes in the landscapes are inevitable. Although the shift can still take a few decades but the acceleration to which it is happening right now is hard to reverse at this point.
This year, Amazon has seen the worst fires in the last decade. These have had a massive impact on the ecology of the rainforests which are prone to drying out in the wrong conditions.
According to the lead author Arie Staal and Ingo Fetzer who are conducting the research on this at the Stockholm Resilience center, rainforests can rapidly lose their ability to adapt and are very sensitive to global changes but once gone, “their recovery will take many decades to return to their original state. And given that rainforests host the majority of all the global species, all this will be forever lost”.
