
Dossier
Amazon
The weather in the Amazon is more often dry nowadays and when it is, the world's biggest rainforest produces vast quantities of CO2. This may be the forest's death warrant, with serious consequences for climate. Wageningen researchers see both signs of stress and a surprising degree of resilience.
A lot of water combined with heat and sunlight provide ideal conditions for luxuriant plant growth. This becomes apparent when rain suddenly becomes scarce, as it did in 2005, 2010 and 2015. The vegetation grew at a slower pace and there were more forest fires.
The forest remains a tropical rainforest
Drought causes problems for trees and other plants which are used to a humid environment. The crowns of trees thin out and some trees die off completely. The response of forests to more frequent droughts is surprising: the forest may change in the composition of species present but it remains tropical rainforest, with more or less the same amount of biomass and of sequestrated CO2.
Research chair group Meteorology and Air Quality
Ingrid van der Laan-Luijkx, assistant professor at the Meteorology and Air Quality chair group, can see such effects from Wageningen by studying the air quality above the Amazon. Van der Laan's lab is working with Brazilian researchers who take regular air samples from a small plane at different altitudes above the Amazon.
Want to know more?
- What will the Amazon do? Wageningen World, 2016-4
- Regional atmospheric CO2 inversion reveals seasonal and geographic differences in Amazon net biome exchange, Global Change Biology, 28 April 2016
- Collecting air above the Amazon. Resource, 12 Feb 2015
News 2017-2020
-
Tropical forests can handle the heat, up to a point
-
Marielos Peña Claros appointed as personal professor in Forest Ecology and Forest Management
-
Six questions about the causes and effects of wildfires in the Amazon
-
Wet and dry tropical forests show opposite pathways in forest recovery
-
Millennial-scale effects of human disturbance on tropical forests
-
Amazon absorbed less carbon during the El Niño weather event
-
Towards an operational service for forensic tracing of tropical timber
-
Amazon forests stabilise each other during drought
-
Estimating river delta change with Google Earth
-
A growing climate niche for giant trees
News 2015-2016
Publications about the Amazon
-
Inter-comparison of optical and SAR-based forest disturbance warning systems in the Amazon shows the potential of combined SAR-optical monitoring
International Journal of Remote Sensing 44 (2023)1. - ISSN 0143-1161 - p. 59 - 77. -
Geographic patterns of tree dispersal modes in Amazonia and their ecological correlates
Global Ecology and Biogeography 32 (2023)1. - ISSN 1466-822X - p. 49 - 69. -
Restoration success in former Amazonian mines is driven by soil amendment and forest proximity
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. Biological sciences 378 (2023)1867. - ISSN 0962-8436 -
Community enforcement and tenure security : A fuzzy-set qualitative Comparative analysis of twelve community forest management initiatives in the Peruvian Amazon
World Development 161 (2023). - ISSN 0305-750X -
Primary Research Data Management of Trees and Palms in Chakras
: Wageningen University & Research -
Sixteen years of MOPITT satellite data strongly constrain Amazon CO fire emissions
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics 22 (2022)22. - ISSN 1680-7316 - p. 14735 - 14750. -
Divergence of climbing escape flight performance in Morpho butterflies living in different microhabitats : In collection: Comparative biomechanics of movement
Journal of Experimental Biology 225 (2022)15. - ISSN 0022-0949 - 12 p. -
Precision of subnational forest AGB estimates within the Peruvian Amazonia using a global biomass map
International Journal of applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 115 (2022). - ISSN 0303-2434 -
Understanding the transgression of global and regional freshwater planetary boundaries
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. Series A, Mathematical, physical and engineering sciences 380 (2022)2238. - ISSN 1364-503X -
Cassava root yield variability in shifting cultivation systems in the eastern Amazon region of Brazil
Experimental Agriculture 58 (2022). - ISSN 0014-4797 - p. 1 - 19.