Early warning system for the Amazon
Unsustainable regional development and climate change in the Amazon can lead to deforestation, regional disturbance of temperatures and the water cycle, and loss of carbon stocks and biodiversity. In turn, these changes can result in forest loss, droughts, low river levels, floods, and loss of hydropower energy and many other ecosystem services. They can also lead to an increased risk of diseases and loss of agricultural productivity. The AMAZALERT (Raising the alert about critical feedbacks between climate and long-term land use change in the Amazon) project investigated whether current Amazon policies are effective. It also developed an early warning system (EWS) to detect serious damage to the ecosystem. Researchers analysed a number of global and regional climate models to determine whether they agreed with climate data collected during the project. All of the models studied were shown to underestimate rainfall in the region, but the models were improved where possible. All relevant land-use policies and reports in the region were analysed before creating the EWS. A blueprint EWS was developed after considering different methodologies, requirements and potential applications. AMAZALERT also improved climate models for rainforest regions and created or expanded climate databases for use in future projects. By combining and developing such model frameworks and data-providing networks, scientists will be able to predict and identify the possible circumstances leading to degradation of Amazonian ecosystems. This can provide the basis for an EWS that increases societal resilience and improves the capability to avoid large-scale or rapid decline of one of the world's key biomes, the forests of the Amazon.
Keywords
Early warning system, Amazon, rainforest, climate models, deforestation, climate change
