Tree Mortality May Lead to Carbon Tipping Point in the Amazon by 2050s

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By Rebecca Owen, Eos/AGU. 

Excerpt: The Amazon rainforest is home to a diverse cast of plants and animals. This vital, verdant landscape also plays a crucial role in managing the effects of climate change by storing significant amounts of carbon and helping regulate temperatures and rainfall both regionally and globally. But as drought conditions, extreme weather, and deforestation in the Amazon increase, trees, which absorb carbon via photosynthesis when they are living, are dying—and releasing carbon into the atmosphere as they decay. These drought-induced tree deaths may turn the rainforest from a carbon sink to a carbon source. Using models that predict tree mortality and the subsequent changes in carbon balance, Yao et al. suggest in a new study that certain regions of the Amazon rainforest may pass a tipping point by the middle of the 21st century.... 

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