Amazon rainforest released more carbon than it stored

The Brazilian Amazon rainforest released more carbon than it stored over the last decade, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change. 

The researchers found that the degradation of the forests was leading to more carbon loss than deforestation.

Degradation is linked to deforestation, but it is also caused by tree-felling, forest fires and climate events such as droughts.

Such degradation can be hard to track, but the research team used the satellite vegetation index L-VOD. Using this index and thanks to a new technique for monitoring deforestation developed by the University of Oklahoma, the researchers were able to evaluate changes in the forests carbon stocks.

The research team found that large areas of rainforest were degraded or destroyed due to human activity and climate change, leading to carbon loss.

The findings revealed a significant increase in deforestation in 2019, with 3.9 million hectares of land destroyed compared to about 1 million per year in 2017 and 2018.

The 3.9 million hectares of forest destroyed is 30% more than in 2015 when extreme El Niño droughts led to increased tree mortality and wildfires.

A change of government in Brazil in 2019 brought a sharp decline in the country’s environmental protection.

Professor Stephen Sitch, of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute, said: ‘The Brazilian Amazon as a whole has lost some of its biomass, and therefore released carbon. We all know the importance of Amazon deforestation for global climate change.

‘Yet our study shows how emissions from associated forest degradation processes can be even larger. Degradation is a pervasive threat to future forest integrity and requires urgent research attention.’

In related news, large ecosystems such as the Amazon rainforest will collapse ‘alarmingly quickly’ once a crucial tipping point is reached, according to researchers at Bangor and Southampton University, the School of Oriental and African Studies and the University of London.

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