A team of more than 100 scientists has assessed global warming's impact on thousands of tree species across the Amazon rainforest, assessing the winners and losers from 30 years of climate change.
Their analysis found that the effects of climate change are altering the rainforest’s composition of tree species, but not quickly enough to keep up with the changing environment.
The team, led by University of Leeds in collaboration with more than 30 institutions around the world, used long-term records from more than a hundred plots as part of the Amazon Forest Inventory Network (RAINFOR) to track the lives of individual trees across the Amazon region.
Their results found that since the 1980s, the effects of global environmental change – stronger droughts, increased temperatures and higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere – has slowly affected specific tree species’ growth and mortality.
Read more at University of Leeds
Image: Measuring big trees in Central Amazon, Brazil, 2016 (Credit: Adriane Esquivel Muelbert, University of Leeds)