The Amazon rainforest may turn into savannah faster than expected

The Amazon rainforest, known as the Earth's lungs, is in danger of turning into savanna sooner than scientists previously thought.

A transformation that would have serious consequences on the entire planet.

© REUTERS/Enrique Castro-Mendivil

Text by: RFI Follow

1 min

The Amazon is bad and it will get worse.

This is the conclusion of a study published in the prestigious journal

Nature

.

According to its authors, at the current rate of climate change, it could even turn into a savannah.

A disaster obviously for the climate and the biodiversity it hosts.

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The moment when a system is so disrupted that it eventually collapses is called a tipping point.

And under the blows of global warming and deforestation, that of the Amazon forest could occur faster than expected.

To reach this conclusion, the

study

authors used 25 years of satellite data.

The report is terrible: three quarters of the surface of the forest are in poor health and the regions most affected by man have already lost a large part of their ability to adapt.

Eventually, the green lung will irremediably turn into savannah.

This will obviously not happen overnight, but some models are already anticipating a start of the process as early as 2050. This new study confirms a bad trend;

it was recently discovered that its Brazilian part now emits more carbon than it sequesters.

Risk of cascading effect

After the tipping point would then come the cascading effect.

According to the authors, the transformation of the Amazon basin into savannah would have enormous consequences, in fact 90 billion tonnes of CO2 would be released into the atmosphere, enough to amplify global warming and increasingly disturb other ecosystems.

►Also read: In Marseille, the peoples of the Amazon propose a motion to better protect their forest

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  • Amazon

  • Environment

  • Biodiversity

  • Climate change