This year an important
Amazon river tributary, the Rio Negro, fell
to its lowest ever recorded level. Droughts
are likely to occur more frequently and
become more intense in the future due to
climate change. Image: Rodrigo Baléia
/ Greenpeace
Severe drought could turn the Amazon rainforest
into a source of carbon emissions contributing
to climate change, rather than a carbon
sink absorbing emissions. This is one of
the alarming findings of a new study featured
in Science, which has found that drought
has again damaged the world’s largest rainforest.
Unfortunately severe droughts like the one
that occurred last year, and previously
in 2005, fit the predictions of the climate
change impacts we can expect for the Amazon.
As climate change takes hold, we may see
more extreme weather and more damaging droughts
in the Amazon region, but we can also act
to boost the resilience of the rainforest
to these events.
The key to increasing
the strength of forests to withstand drought
and other climate impacts is to maintain
and protect intact areas of forest. This
means stopping deforestation, which makes
the impacts of drought worse. Numerous studies
show that deforestation chops forest into
smaller and smaller fragments, and the edges
of these fragments are drier than the interiors.
The more fragmentation there is, the more
dry edges there are and therefore the forest
becomes even more vulnerable to drought
and fire. Drought and fire then further
fragment the forest, increasing its vulnerability
even further – in a vicious cycle that weakens
the forests ability to withstand the impacts
of climate change.
It doesn’t stop there.
Severe drought and resulting fires release
carbon previously stored by the forest,
thereby fuelling change. And the loss of
forest makes the Amazon less effective in
soaking up carbon from the atmosphere, a
crucial role that forests play in slowing
climate change. The impacts of climate change
– such as severe drought – combined with
deforestation threaten to transform the
Amazon rainforest from a valuable asset
in the fight to stop climate change - into
a source of emissions that speed it up.
Stopping deforestation will help to protect
the Amazon and ensure it remains a valuable
carbon sink that will help us mitigate the
consequences of climate change.
Scientists agree that
large continuous areas of intact forest
are more resistant to climate change than
small areas of degraded forests. They have
more moisture to withstand extreme drought,
and also act as better buffers against other
climate impacts like severe storms. And,
of course protecting the Amazon is also
crucial to protecting biodiversity, since
intact forest is also important for animals
- especially for large mammals that need
extensive areas to forage or hunt - and
aids in the migration of species.
Roughly 80% of the Amazon
forest remains intact. The alarming findings
of this latest study only make it more clear
how vital it is for us to protect this intact
rainforest from deforestation and lessen
the climate impacts, like severe droughts,
that damage forests by reducing carbon emissions
contributing to climate change.
+ More
Gulf oil spill claiming
dolphin's lives?
As we approach the one
year anniversary of the explosion of the
Deepwater Horizon oilrig in the Gulf of
Mexico, there is renewed interest in the
questions which many of us began asking
last April: How serious is this spill? How
long will the impacts last, and how far
will they reach? Can we trust BP or the
government when they say everything is fine?
The truth is starting
to come out, and it is not pretty. Four
more dead baby dolphins washed up on Horn
Island, Mississippi this week. When Greenpeace
visited Horn Island last September, we found
beaches covered in oily tar balls—and dolphins
swimming offshore.
Now twenty-eight dead
dolphins have been found already this year,
eighteen of them newborns. NOAA (the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)
confirmed that the number of strandings
is unusually high, and is working with the
Institute of Marine Mammal Studies to investigate
whether the oil spill is responsible.
If what we saw last
year is any indication, it may be a very
long time before we hear anything definitive
from the government on this. But for most
of us, this looks… fishy.
And it’s not just the
dolphins.
In a presentation to
the American Association for the Advancement
of Science, Samantha Joye, a scientist at
the University of Georgia, reported that
the impact of BP’s oil disaster on the deep
sea marine life of the Gulf was “devastating.”
Using the Alvin submersible to explore the
area near the origin of the spill, scientists
found a thick layer of oil still carpeting
the bottom.
"Filter-feeding
organisms, invertebrate worms, corals, sea
fans—all of those were substantially impacted—and
by impacted, I mean essentially killed,”
said Dr. Joye in an interview with the BBC.
It is going to take
years before we can understand the full
impact of the BP Horizon disaster on the
ecosystem and coastal communities of the
Gulf of Mexico. Perhaps the most important
question now is whether President Obama
and Secretary Salazar will recognize that
fact and call a halt to new offshore drilling,
or whether they will allow companies like
BP and Shell to move forward with their
plans to drill in the remote, pristine waters
of the Arctic.
