Amazon Rainforest (Photo : Reuters)
The Amazon rainforest is found to be losing its capability to absorb carbon as tree deaths increase. This weakens its abilities to lessen the impact of man-made climate change. According to a study led by the University of Leeds, while the increase in carbon dioxide would primarily boost growth in trees and spur photosynthesis, the Amazon trees' mortality rates also increased by more than a third.
"With time, the growth stimulation feeds through the system, causing trees to live faster, and so die younger," explained Oliver Phillips, a co-author from the university, Bloomberg reported.
The Amazon's diminishing capability to store carbon may have been the consequence for future levels of the greenhouse gases and needs to be imitated in climate models. The tropical rainforests would use up around half the carbon scrubbed from the atmosphere by the land biosphere, as explained by Lars Hedin of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University.
Based on the study, 321 marks in different parts of the Amazon remains untouched by any human activities, estimated the total amount of carbon dioxide being absorbed by the rain forest had decreased by 30 percent, to 1.4 billion tonnes a year in the 2000s from 2.0 billion in the 1990s, according to Mail Online.
" Forest growth has flatlined over the last decade, the whole forest is living faster - trees grow faster, die faster. The net carbon uptake of forests has significantly weakened," explained Roel Brienen of the University of Leeds. The said study was joined by almost 100 experts.
