Amazon rainforest ‘could become a desert’

daily times pakistan ^ | 7/24/06 | daily times monitor

[voletti]

LAHORE: The vast Amazon rainforest is on the verge of being turned into desert, with catastrophic consequences for the world’s climate, alarming research suggests.

And the process, which would be irreversible, could begin as early as next year.

Geoffrey Lean and Fred Pearce, writing for The Independent on Sunday, quote studies conducted by the blue-chip Woods Hole Research Centre in Amazonia as concluding that the forest cannot withstand more than two consecutive years of drought without breaking down.

“Scientists say that this would spread drought into the northern hemisphere, including Britain, and could massively accelerate global warming with incalculable consequences, spinning out of control, a process that might end in the world becoming uninhabitable,” Lean and Pearce report.

The news comes amidst a heat wave in Britain and much of Europe and the United States. It is also in the wake of a warning by an international group of experts that the forest is reaching a “tipping point” that would lead to its total destruction, the Independent reports. Lean and Pearce say that the research has taken even the scientists conducting it by surprise.

“When Dr Dan Nepstead started the experiment in 2002 – by covering a chunk of rainforest the size of a football pitch with plastic panels to see how it would cope without rain – he surrounded it with sophisticated sensors, expecting to record only minor changes,” The Independent reports.

“The trees managed the first year of drought without difficulty. In the second year, they sunk their roots deeper to find moisture, but survived. But in year three, they started dying. Beginning with the tallest the trees started to come crashing down, exposing the forest floor to the drying sun.

By the end of the year the trees had released more than two-thirds of the carbon dioxide they have stored during their lives, helping to act as a break on global warming. Instead they began accelerating the climate change.”

Lean and Pearce report that the Amazon was entering its second successive year of drought, and could start dying as early as next year. It contains 90 billion tonnes of carbon, enough to increase the rate of global warming by 50 percent.

“Dr Nepstead expects ‘mega-fires’ rapidly to sweep across the drying jungle. With the trees gone, the soil will bake in the sun and the rainforest could become desert,” The Independent reports.

“Dr Deborah Clark from the University of Missouri, one of the world’s top forest ecologists, says the research shows that ‘the lock has broken’ on the Amazon ecosystem. She adds: the Amazon is ‘headed in a terrible direction’.”

[wolfcreek]

Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda! Let us know when it happens!

[Sooth2222]

"...studies conducted by the blue-chip Woods Hole Research Centre in Amazonia...Dr Dan Nepstead started the experiment in 2002 – by covering a chunk of rainforest the size of a football pitch with plastic panels to see how it would cope without rain..."

Our tax dollars at work? He actually obtained a grant to see what happens if you exclude rain from a rain forest?

I wonder what would happen if you removed the water from the ocean? (Sadly, I am not a Ph.D. at MIT so I will probably not receive a grant to explore this brilliant idea!)

[Candor7]

Chicken Little syndrome. The sky is falling. That fact alone requires the immediate totalitarian transformation of government to MAKE PEOPLE STOP!

If anyone has been in the Amazon, you know that plants can grow so fast you can see them do it, like watching the hour hand on a clock.

The only thing that could possibly destroy the bio-mass of the Amazon Basin is a complete cessation of rain fall, and even then the massive compost process would carry plant life for hundreds of years.

This is just a revisit of the idea: " My daughter will be a virgin her whole life!"

[razorback-bert]

This just proves one should not do drugs and science at the same time.

[TheBattman]

Algore at it again? He just HAS to quit bellowing all that hot air - it's changing the Amazon climate....

Seriously, has anyone been down to the Amazon region? I have yet to hear what I would call a reliable source claiming that the region is about to turn into a desert. My understanding is that that would require the rain to dry up - and I haven't seen or heard any evidence that that is happening.

[Candor7]

You forgot to mention Taco eating Mexican illegals, the greatest source of Urban Methane in the USA. The lock is broken, and the desertification of Urban American could begin as early as next year.

First our Urban centers will dry up as a result of a collapsing economy due to crime, as our giant institutions which preserve the American lifestyle of individual freedoms based on responsibility of each of us, come crashing down.

The rule of law shall end and the precincts of our large cities will have no more cars, only braying donkeys that sidle back and forth aimlessly while their owners do weed in the shadows of a society of freedom long forgotten!We need a totalitarian state right NOW!

[Restorer]

Climatoligists are well aware of many past episodes of "mega El Ninos" in South America. These resulted in intense drought in the rain forest and huge forest fires.

Somehow the jungle always survives and regenerates.

[Obadiah]

Hey yahoo "scientist", cover up your entire lawn with plastic garbage bags and prevent any moisture from entering for 3 years....hmmm...do you think anything will die? BONEHEAD!

[seasoned traditionalist]

"Global Warming is coming; Global Warming is coming. The Earth will soon become "Uninhabitable."

"We are all going to Die!"

"Repent now all ye sinners, (That's thee and not me, don't you know, for I am pure of heart--and don't own a Hummer, or use hair spray and would rather swelter than turn on my air conditioner) before its too late and God's wrath descends on all American, Capitalist Pigs who have used up all of His precious resources and despoiled His Universe."

[SampleMan]

Wow, what fascinating science. Cut out water and sun from plants and they die! Who knew?

This is an obviously conclusive scientific study. After all, it was done by a "scientist", and they know more than you do.

[bboop]

The sky is falling? And now they have a date!! Next year!!! I am SO TIRED of the hysteria.

[CPOSharky]

Is this what happened to the Sahara rain forest?

[polymuser]

Woods Hole must be running out of funding.

[yankeedame]

Oh !!Thats right, we dont have a rain machine do we?

No, but it's on lay-away down at the Haliburton Outlet.

[oldtimer2]

And don't forget that poison ivy is going to grow much better because of 'global warming." we will have the Amazon basin filled with poison ivy. It will be a disaster.

[Einigkeit_Recht_Freiheit]

It might just be bad reporting. Hard call to make in the circumstance. The experiement may have been legitimate and the reporter an idiot at explaining it.

[reformedliberal]

We watched the Brokaw (IIRC) doomsday special on Discovery over the weekend. An ecologist who studies the Amazon dug down a long ways (sorry, we were so busy screaming at the TV, I missed the depth) and found that the trees in the Amazon have extremely deep roots. The ecologist still maintained that *someday* the trees could theoretically be unable to reach enough water to survive. This prediction was accompanied by aerial views of vast tracts of mature canopy forest.

I recall being told in the past that the trees in the rain forest have shallow roots due to what was claimed to be poor soils. The warning then was that the slightest upset to the rain forest ecology would cause the soils to dry up and the trees to fall over, rot, release carbon, etc.

It wasn't that long ago that research from the Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics was released that disproved the *lungs of the planet* idea by showing that the rain forest actually releases huge plumes of methane, as do fields of grain crops.

From the article:

"The evidence of direct methane emissions from plants also explains the unexpectedly high methane concentrations over tropical forests, measured only recently via satellite by a research group from the University of Heidelberg.

But why would such a seemingly obvious discovery only come about now, 20 years after hundreds of scientists around the globe started investigating the global methane cycle? "Methane could not really be created that way," says Dr. Frank Keppler. "Until now all the textbooks have said that biogenic methane can only be produced in the absence of oxygen. For that simple reason, nobody looked closely at this."

The fact is that, in order to determine the quantity of emissions, scientists indeed have to make very careful measurements. The researchers from Heidelberg conducted most of their experiments in methane-free air, in order to factor out the high natural background of methane. Furthermore they used isotope analysis to show beyond doubt that this was an undiscovered process of methane production. By "looking closely" - despite established opinion - they made a discovery that will require textbooks to have their passages about methane production rewritten."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/01/060115155754.htm

[sgtbono2002]

Hopw about Walmart? Dont they have one?

[Mike Darancette]

Geoffrey Lean and Fred Pearce, writing for The Independent on Sunday, quote studies conducted by the blue-chip Woods Hole Research Centre in Amazonia as concluding that the forest cannot withstand more than two consecutive years of drought without breaking down.

Is he telling us that there has never been three consecutive drought years in the Amazon in human history in the region?

If this is true is there anything that can possibly be done to reverse this process?

[reformedliberal]

live link
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/01/060115155754.htm