In just great news, the Amazon Rainforest is apparently being pushed to a “tipping point” as longer periods of drought and other environmental traumas are seriously fucking things up.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports that a new study published in the Nature Climate Change journal on Monday has discovered that the Amazon is really struggling to bounce back after serious events like drought and fires. It’s found that more than three-quarters of the intricate and complex ecosystem hasn’t been able to recover after these traumatic events.
Chris Boulton, one of the study’s report authors from the University of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute, told the SMH that sections of the rainforest that are closer to human intervention and those that get less rain are struggling the most.
“In areas that are closer to human land use, such as urban areas and croplands, they tend to be losing resilience faster,” he said.
Scientists have also warned that the Amazon rainforest could be approaching a tipping point where the landscape could turn into a drier forest. This feared tipping point could even see parts of it become a savannah — a much more dehydrated expanse of land where the canopy no longer protects the growth underneath.
That means the Amazon as we know it, and have known it for generations, would no longer be considered a rainforest. It would likely bring about the extinction of countless species and significantly fuck up any attempts at suppressing climate change by the world purely through the incredible amount of carbon dioxide the Amazon would spew into the atmosphere.
SMH reports there’s no timeline on when this tipping point might happen for the largest rainforest on the planet, but those drier areas that are currently struggling to heal from drought and fire would be the first to flip.
Just really loving the optics on this one, mates.
