How Does Climate Change Affect the Rainforest

As we all know rainforests are the primary absorbers of large amounts of carbon dioxide produced by humans and man-made facilities. To inform you, carbon dioxide levels are now 40% higher than what s experience a century ago. They can benefit, really, but as a saying goes “anything put into excess is bad.” 

So, what’s the biggest worry?

This has to be drought. Apparently, scientific studies in the Amazon rainforest found that tropical rainforest are sensitive to drought. Some of the areas that were once carbon sinks turned out to be carbon sources. How did it happen? Plots subjected to relative decrease in rainfall caused trees to die which resulted to carbon emissions. In a study, it has been reported that intense dry season and lesser amount of rainfall in Amazon in 2005 have caused a 1.2 to 1.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide release. 

In one way or another, rainforests and climate change are interdependent to one another. When climate changes and produce an abnormal amount of rainfall in a rainforest, the trees will eventually die and fail to fulfill their tasks as carbon sinks. In this way, carbon gases will be abundant in the atmosphere, and rainforests will not be solid buffers against climate change.

At present, up to what level are our carbon sinks?

Scientists said that mature tropical rainforests covering about 10 percent of the Earth’s land, absorbs as much as 1.3 billion tons of carbon each year. Thus, tropical rainforests account for forty percent of the world’s carbon sink. On a brighter note, it’s good to know that mature tropical rainforests keep getting better each year in absorbing carbon from the atmosphere.

“Forests have given us subsidy for a long time, and we should never take this for granted”, as an ecologist said. As trusted creations for environment conservation, we should take good care to what is entrusted to us. Let us remember that whatever we do to the environment at present will produce either satisfying or worsening effects extending up to the future generations.