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What Would Happen if the Amazon Rainforest Disappeared?

The Amazon rainforest is shrinking at an alarming rate due to an increase in human activity within the rainforest, as well as fires and deforestation. Human activity, like climate change, cattle farming, soy farming, and colonization has brought the “lungs of the planet” near the tipping point. In other words, with as much as 17% of the forest lost already, scientists believe that the tipping point will be reached at 20% to 25% of deforestation even if climate change is tamed. If global temperatures rise by 4°C as predicted, the central, eastern, and southern Amazon is highly likely to become barren scrubland.

Paired with colonization within the rainforest, warming global temperatures, and environmental degradation, the Amazon may not exist at all within a few generations, which will have dire consequences for life on earth. As the Amazon continues to be neglected by Brazil and the world, the entire global population will soon have to face serious global consequences. Trees play a crucial role in putting water back into the atmosphere, and their absence means less rainfall and higher temperatures.

The Amazon tipping point may also lead to a cascade of either potential climate tippings points, as forest dieback is strongly interconnected with other phenomena, such as the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, which could cause sea levels to rise, and the degradation of frozen soil in the Arctic known as the permafrost, which would release greenhouse gases help in the ice, as well as long-dormant diseases.

The changes brought by the onset of the deterioration of the forest would lead to global warming that humans would find impossible to reverse. Deforestation creates a giant change to the water and energy balance, leading to a shift in climate.

What Would Happen if the Amazon Was No Longer a Rainforest?

A pair of scientists from Princeton University modeled the effects of deforesting the entire Amazon within the next 30 years, replacing it with pasture. The researchers, Elena Shevliakova and Stephen Pacala found that even if the rest of the world is able to cut its carbon emissions, turning the Amazon into pasture would cause average global temperatures to rise 0.25°C above the expected increases.

This may not seem significant, but it would challenge efforts to limit average warming to the current Paris Agreement target of 1.5°C, and it would have detrimental effects in the Amazon region itself. The Amazon would become virtually uninhabitable, as rainfall would be 25 percent lower and temperatures up to 4.5°C hotter. The Amazon is at the center of the planet’s climate, food, water, and biodiversity, meaning that an uninhabitable Amazon would knock the entire planet out of balance.

Decreased Rainfall

A deforested Amazon would lead to decreased rainfall in crucial areas of the mainland United States, like the northwestern coast and the Sierra Nevada snowpack, which provides a huge source of water for California farms and cities. More immediately, however, South America would feel a quick and defeating blow, as faltering rainfall would almost deplete agricultural areas in South America.

Increased Drought

Decreased rainfall has direct effects on drought levels on a global scale. There is less water to drink and less water for agriculture, so it would directly affect our wellbeing and way of life. Serious changes would have to be made in order to make up for this non-renewable natural resource.

More Greenhouse Gases

Cutting down any more trees in the Amazon would lead to a transition in which tremendous quantities of planet-warming greenhouse gases would be released. Carbon dioxide emissions will increase so massively that everyone will suffer, namely with poorer air quality and hotter global temperatures.

Loss of Biodiversity

The Amazon is home to a staggering number of species of plants, animals, insects, and fungi. It holds a rich array of the life that exists on earth, so it goes to say that the elimination of the rainforest sanctuary that these animals call home will inevitably lead to their extinction. Their death sentences will be slow as their breeding rates fall and competition for food becomes more intense. The loss of the Amazon means the loss of an entire ecosystem.

Bigger, Longer Fires

Without the help of the Amazon’s trees, an increase in fires that are bigger than ever and burn for much longer will certainly be their predecessors. These fires will release even more carbon into the atmosphere, worsening some of the conditions already highlighted here, like an increasingly hotter climate.

Bottom Line

The deforestation happening in the Amazon rainforest is happening for several reasons that we highlighted above, including several others that we haven’t mentioned, like the timber industry. The world’s forests cannot sustainably meet the soaring global demand for timber products under current forest management practices, meaning that the industry must find other ways to sustainably operate, supporting the forest itself and the people who live there.

Sustainable Forest Products is committed to providing timber at nearly no cost to the environment. SFP offers exotic, high-quality water logs, or timber that has been recovered from rivers. Why cut down hundreds of thousands of living trees when pre-cut logs sit on river bottoms, perfectly preserved? Submerged tropical hardwoods don’t rot away, rather, they petrify, becoming stronger and more beautiful. They are a priceless, untapped resource with the power to take pressure off of rainforests and protect the environment.

Support SFP in our fight to maintain a small carbon footprint and maintain the integrity of what is left of the Amazon rainforest.