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Over the last several years researchers have said that the Amazon is on the verge of transforming from a crucial storehouse for heat-trapping gasses to a source of them, a dangerous shift that could destabilize the atmosphere of the planet.
Now, after years of painstaking and inventive research, they have definitively measured that shift.
In a study published Wednesday in Nature, a team of researchers led by scientists from the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research, reported results from measuring carbon concentrations in columns of air above the Amazon. They found that the massive continental-size swath of tropical forest is releasing more carbon dioxide than it accumulates or stores, thanks to deforestation and fires.
“There is no doubt that the Amazon is a source,” said Luciana Gatti, the lead author of the study.
Journal Reference:
Luciana V. Gatti, Luana S. Basso, John B. Miller, et al. Amazonia as a carbon source linked to deforestation and climate change, Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03629-6)
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday July 19 2021, @01:34PM
And yes, there are other ways to prevent rot under very particular circumstances - even just rapidly and permanently submerging it can preserve it for centuries. There's whole companies dedicated to logging the old forests that were submerged under artificial lakes.
But they weren't necessary during that roughly 80 million year window when wood everywhere on Earth failed to decompose because nothing could eat it, and just got slowly buried under ever more dust and biomass instead, with the heat and pressure eventually turning it into coal.