Researchers predict the Amazon is in for trouble as the dry season gets longer; the changing weather could lead to a significant increase in devastating forest fires and droughts.
The research team burned 50-hectare forest plots in southeast Amazonia over an eight year period in hopes of gaining insight into how the changing weather affected tree deaths, a Woods Hole Research Center news release reported.
"[The surprise was] the importance of drought. The forest didn't burn much in average years, but burned extensively in drought years," Woods Hole Research Center scientists Michael Coe said in the news release.
Climate change is expected to cut down the rainy season in the region and increase dry seasons and drought conditions.
"We tend to think only about average conditions but it is the non-average conditions we have to worry about," Dr. Coe said.
The experimental burns showed that fires in 2007 burned 10 times more area than they had in past years. This is "an area equivalent to a million soccer fields" co-author Douglas Morton of NASA said in the news release.
"Agricultural development has created smaller forest fragments, which exposes forest edges to the hotter dryer conditions in the surrounding landscape and makes them vulnerable to escaped fires," Doctor Marcia Macedo, another researchers on the project, said in the news release. "These fragmented forests are more likely to be invaded by flammable grasses, which further increase the likelihood and intensity of future fires."
The research shows that fires are already destroying Southern Amazonia forests and the devastation is only going to get worse.
"This study shows that fires are already degrading large areas of forests in Southern Amazonia and highlights the need to include interactions between extreme weather events and fire when attempting to predict the future of Amazonian forests under a changing climate," lead-author doctor Paulo Brando said in the news release.
"None of the models used to evaluate future Amazon forest health include fire, so most predictions grossly underestimate the amount of tree death and overestimate overall forest health," Dr. Coe said.
