Amazon importance - A Level Geography

Significance of the Amazon in the carbon and water cycles - physical systems and sustainability

How many tonnes of moisture does the Amazon release into the atmosphere everyday?

On a typical day, the trees in the Amazon release 20 billion tons of moisture into the atmosphere, seeding the clouds with rain

How many times is moisture recycled as clouds move westwards across the Amazon?

As these clouds move westward across the Amazon, moisture is recycled from sky to land five to six times

Where is the Amazon essential for?

• It provides critical moisture for agriculture and urban water reserves in Central Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and northern Argentina.

• Studies have found that this moisture cycle regulates rainfall patterns as far as the Midwest in the United States

What % of trees are needed to maintain the Amazon’s hydrological cycle?

• Research has shown that the Amazon needs 80% of the trees standing to continue this critical hydrological cycle.

• The Amazon is now at the tipping point, with approximately 81% of the forests intact. Without the hydrological cycle

How many tonnes of carbon does the Amazon store?

More than 150 billion metric tonnes

How is carbon stored in the Amazon?

• Roughly half the Amazon’s carbon store is in the soil.

• The other half is in its trees, which contain about 20% of all the carbon captured by vegetation across the planet.

Impact of deforestation on Amazon

• When trees are cut down, their stored carbon is released into the atmosphere

• Deforesting industries often clear an area by setting fires, which rapidly release stored carbon into the atmosphere

• Trees left unburned but cut decompose, also releasing their carbon

Impacts of warming on Amazon

• The effects are creating longer regional dry periods and less rainfall, driving tree die-off

• Dryness and declining forest cover also increase the risk of wildfires

• During the dry season, more intense sunshine causes vast amounts of water—stored in trees and soils from wet periods - to transpire

• That water vapor reaches the lower atmosphere and becomes clouds and rain again - One molecule of water vapor that enters the Amazon recycles between five to eight times

• A cycle of warming, drying and forest shrinkage could push the Amazon to a minimum threshold of tree cover, below which the forest would irreversibly degrade into a simpler grassland habitat.

• Parts of the southern Amazon are transitioning into ‘open canopy degraded ecosystems’ - a landscape with sparse tree cover, containing reduced biodiversity and less tree cover

How many years carbon emissions is the Amazon’s carbon store equivalent to?

More than 10 years’ worth of global fossil fuel emissions

How much would local rainfall fall if the entire Amazon degraded into savanna?

• If the entire Amazon degraded into an open, savanna-like landscape, local rainfall would decline by up to 30 percent, with consequences felt as far as Colombia and Argentina

• The forest helps to cool surfaces so regional temperatures would increase by several degrees

Impact of Amazon carbon release on global temperatures

• Releasing 120 billion metric tons of CO₂ by removing forest would warm the planet by an estimated 0.25 degree Celsius

Indigenous Amazonian Group

• Yanomami

• Inhibit a vast area of forest between Venezuela and Brazil

• Live of fishing, hunting and fruit gathering

• At risk due to deforestation and mining - large gold reserves under their land, despite their land having protected status