NYT: New Study Shows Risks of Amazon Deforestation. And Rewards of Protection.

If deforestation and global warming continue unchecked, the Amazon rainforest could begin a gradual transition to a degraded, grassland-like ecosystem in just a few decades, according to new research published in the journal Nature on May 6. The study provides new insight into when the forest might start to slip over a so-called tipping point at which an incremental but profound and irreversible ecosystem transformation begins. The analysis examined the relationship between deforestation and global warming. Deforestation can worsen the effects of rising temperatures by reducing rainfall. Those intensified effects, in turn, can lower the warming threshold at which ecosystem changes begin. “The consequences of the Amazon tipping point are catastrophic for the entire planet,” said Bernardo M. Flores, an ecology researcher at the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Nature report HERE (technical)