Effects of deforestation in the Amazon on the rainfall and evapotranspiration regimes
- Resumen
- In South America, Amazonia represent 7 million km2, mostly constituted by dense tropical rain forest, thus representing a huge source of evapotranspiration and strongly affecting the regional rainfall regimes. In recent years, new findings of the LBA Project (now, the Research Program on the Biosphere-Atmosphere Interactions in Amazonia) have confirmed and explained better the role of the forest as a vital regulator of the regional water cycle, as well as of the whole South America. The forest emit a large amount of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) which contributes to produce shallow and relatively warm clouds, very efficient to induce rains in the region. Large scale deforestation can disrupt strongly this mechanism and deeply modify the processes of formation of clouds and rains, with reflections on other neighboring, or even far away regions. Amazonia functions as an important center for redistribution of the water vapor entering the basin from the Atlantic Ocean, thus partly regulating the annual distribution of rains in the central and southern regions of Brazil and even of South America. On the other hand, the large scale environmental and climatic changes affect the rainfall regime in Amazonia, as illustrated by the phenomenon El Niño, more frequent in the last years, and the strong Amazonian drought during 2005.
- Autor
- Luizâo, Flávio; Nobre, Carlos; Manzi, Antonio; Artaxo, Paulo; Correia, Francis
- Palabras Clave
- Ecosistemas amazónicos, Deforestación, Ciclo hidrológico, Cambio climático
- Idioma
- Inglés
- Documentos
- Ponencia ( 11 pag, 958 Kb )
- Presentación
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