Deforestation triggering irreversible transition in Amazon hydrological cycle

Tropical Deforestation in the Amazon

Tropical forests are a unique environmental resource that provide numerous global benefits. Of the world's biomes, they provide the greatest biological diversity of plants and animals. It is estimated that these forests contain at least fifty percent of the world's animal species and almost seventy five percent of the world's plant species. Increased deforestation is likely to reduce this biodi...

Amazon deforestation and climate change.

A coupled numerical model of the global atmosphere and biosphere has been used to assess the effects of Amazon deforestation on the regional and global climate. When the tropical forests in the model were replaced by degraded grass (pasture), there was a significant increase in surface temperature and a decrease in evapotranspiration and precipitation over Amazonia. In the simulation, the lengt...

What Drives Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon?

While previous empirical analysis of deforestation focused on population, this paper builds from a model of land use which suggests many determinants of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. I derive a deforestation equation from this model and test a number of those factors using county-level data for the period 1978]1988. The data include a satellite deforestation measure which allows improv...

Deforestation and Forest Fragmentation in the Amazon

Sensitivity of Amazon Regional Climate to Deforestation

It is known that the Amazon region plays an important role in the global energy, hydrological cycle and carbon balance. This region has been suffering from the course of the past 40 years intense land use and land cover changes. With this in mind, this study has examined possible associations between change in spatial and temporal rainfall variability and land cover change in the Amazon, using ...