What is it about?
Since the turn of the century, four extreme droughts have occurred in the Amazon rainforest. We used monthly satellite images spanning from 2001 to 2019 to determine how the vegetation reacts to repeated periods of drought. If, over the course of the years, the trees need more and more time to recover, we talk about “critical slowing down”, which could mean that the ecosystem is about to reach a tipping point towards large-scale forest dieback and would eventually change into a degraded system with less diversity and complexity.
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Why is it important?
The intensity and frequency of droughts will very likely continue to increase due to climate change. It is therefore crucial that we try to protect the remaining resilience in most of the Amazon rainforest.
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Critical slowing down of the Amazon forest after increased drought occurrence, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, May 2024, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2316924121.
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