Much of the stored carbon is being released back into the atmosphere. As a result of the degradation resulting increment in climate change.
Forests are critical to the Earth’s carbon cycle because they collect and store vast amounts of carbon from the atmosphere. They also keep the earth cool.
However, deforestation and the deterioration of natural resources are causing climate change in tropical regions, which is exacerbated by global warming. While the Amazon rainforest has been hit hard by deforestation, natural resource deterioration is contributing to rising carbon emissions.
According to new satellite studies, the Amazon’s ability to support wildlife and humans is deteriorating as deforestation continues. From 2010 to 2019, the researchers looked into the dynamics of forest carbon in the Amazon rainforest.
They discovered that Amazon had a cumulative gross carbon loss of 4.45 petagrams (PgC) versus a gross gain of 3.78 PgC. (1 PgC is equal to 1 Gigatonne of carbon).
According to a new study published in Nature Climate Change, governments should give the issue more attention. The researchers discovered that the gross forest area loss in 2019 was higher than in 2015, probably due to recent policy changes that have loosened forest preservation policies.
Researchers used data from the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission. As forest area change datasets from Nasa’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer and JAXA’s Phased Array type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar, to pinpoint degradation due to its small scale in the vastness of the forest cover by tree canopies.
Researchers feel that minimizing forest degradation in the Amazon should be a top priority for the Brazilian government to meet the 2015 Paris Agreement’s carbon emission reduction commitment.
