Clipping of news on Brazilian Culture, Law and Citizenship
06/09/2012
This article was translated by an automatic translation system, and was therefore not reviewed by people.
The large-scale deforestation of the Amazon rainforest will cause a decrease in rainfall of up to 12% during the wet season and up to 21% during the dry season, scheduled for the year 2050, according to a British study published Wednesday in the journal " Nature ".
"The forests increase the amount of rainfall that generates wind, and with our work we found that deforestation in the Amazon can cause a large reduction in the volume of rainfall in Brazil," said Efe Dominick Spracklen, chemist and author of the main article publication.
Spracklen and his team of scientists at the University of Leeds, England, studied how the density of forests affects the volume of rainfall between the tropics from satellite data.
The vegetation takes moisture from the earth toward the atmosphere, in the process known as evapotranspiration, influencing the amount of rain.
Spracklen's group found that the wind passing through dense areas of forest produces, days later, double the rainfall that air circulates between a less thick vegetation.
The Amazon and the rainforests of the Congo are the places where the vegetation has a greater effect on rainfall patterns, detailed Spracklen.
When forests are replaced by grasslands or crops, soil moisture decreases, reducing the amount of rainfall.
By combining the data from the study with the current rate of deforestation of the Amazon rainforest, Spracklen said the rain should be reduced by up to 12% in the Amazon basin during the wet season and up to 21% during the dry season in 2050.
Deforestation in some parts of the Amazon rainforest will reduce the rains both there and in other regions, such as the basin of the River Plate, where according to the expert, the rains will decrease 4%.
Experts fear that these changes affect the agricultural sector, which generates $ 15 billion a year on Amazon, as well as the hydropower industry, the region that produces 65% of Brazil's electricity.
It is estimated that each year are cleared 50,000 km ² of forest between the tropics.
Source: Environment Brazil
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This article was translated by an automatic translation system, and was therefore not reviewed by people.