Satellite Data Analysis Shows the Loss of Resilience of the Amazon Rainforest

According to data analysis from high-resolution satellite photographs, the Amazon rainforest is likely losing resilience. This is due to stress induced by a mix of logging and burning.

The impact of human-driven climate change is not yet obvious, but it will most likely have a significant impact in the future.

Since the early 2000s, the ability of the forest to recover from disturbance has been declining for around three-quarters of the forest, which experts consider as a warning sign.

The new evidence comes from a sophisticated statistical study of satellite data on changes in vegetation biomass and production.

It would be too belated when the tipping point is visible

The Amazon is seen as a possible tipping point in the Earth's system, and several studies have highlighted its susceptibility, as per ScienceDaily.

According to experts, computer simulation assessments of its future produce a wide variety of findings. As a result, we've been looking at particular observational data for evidence of resilience changes over the previous few decades.

We've seen a steady decline in rainforest resilience since the early 2000s, but we don't know when the shift from rainforest to savanna will occur.

When it becomes visible, it will most likely be too late to stop it.

According to Tim Lenton, director of the Global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter in England, the loss of the rainforest may result in the release of up to 90 billion tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which is comparable to many years of world emissions.

Limiting global warming would become more difficult as a result.

Previous research have shown a high degree of ambiguity about when such a threshold may be achieved.

However, other studies have found that deforestation, dryness, and other causes might cause significant forest dieback in the Amazon by the end of the century, according to The New York Times.

Carlos Nobre, a prominent scientist at Brazil's National Institute of Amazonian Research and one of the first to raise concerns about the Amazon's extinction more than three decades ago, called the latest study "extremely persuasive."

If only the mean state of a system is considered, it may appear stable

The researchers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the University of Exeter's Global Systems Institute employed stability indicators that had previously been utilized to the Greenland ice sheet and the Atlantic overturning cycle.

These statistical indicators seek to forecast a system's approach to a sudden shift by recognizing a significant slowing down of the system's dynamics, such as its sensitivity to weather variability.

The key slowdown was identified by analyzing two satellite data sets indicating biomass and forest greenness.

This critical slowness might be seen as a weakening of the restorative forces that normally restore the system to equilibrium following shocks.

The Amazon, according to Chris Boulton, a researcher at the University of Exeter and the study's principal author, is like a gigantic water recycling network, as moisture from evaporation and transpiration from trees is carried by winds.

As a result, the loss of some of the forest, as well as some of the moisture, causes greater drying elsewhere.