The articles, both published Thursday in the journal Science, summarize research on deforestation and landscape degradation in the Amazon to deliver a clear message.
The region, which is key to the world’s climate system, “is on the brink of a rapid transition from a mostly forested to non-forested landscape”writes a group of authors, “And the changes are taking place too fast for Amazonian species, peoples and ecosystems to respond adaptively”.
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Among the main culprits are human activities, such as logging and logging for cattle pasture, as well as climate change.
“We know that the two main drivers of deforestation are global climate change and regional deforestation”said James Albert, a biologist at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and lead author of one of the papers. “If development is allowed to go unregulated, there will be an ecological disaster.”.
Albert and his team analyzed data from a report by the Scientific Panel for the Amazon, which documents changes in the Amazon’s ecosystem and biodiversity.
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Specifically, they compared the rate at which humans are changing the Amazon to the rate at which other natural processes are affecting it. They found that human factors are causing habitat degradation and destruction at rates hundreds to thousands of times faster than natural phenomena.
17% of the rainforest has already been affected by disturbances such as logging, fire and road expansion, and 14% has been replaced by pasture or farmland.
The second review article focuses on other human-caused factors degrading the Amazon, including logging, fire, and extreme drought. Analyzing existing data, the researchers found that these impacts are degrading approximately 2.5 million square kilometers, representing more than a third of the region’s remaining forests.
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According to lead author David Lapola, a research scientist at the University of Campinas in Brazil, the analysis completes the focus on deforestation that characterizes much other research on the Amazon. “Although we have been observing the Amazon for a long time with our scientific lens, there are many processes directly caused by humans that we have ignored”Lapola said.
The researchers call for proactive measures to conserve the Amazon and vastly reduce global emissions, such as stricter forest protection policies and halting international financing of market-driven land conversion.
Brazil’s newly elected president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has vowed to protect the Amazon after damage to the rainforest accelerated under his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro.
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William Ripple, an ecologist at Oregon State University who did not co-author any of the papers, said the reviews make “an outstanding job” when documenting the Amazon crisis: “This is an example of the cost of human activity on ecosystems around the world and at some point we will have to change our ways of surviving”.
Source: Gestion
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