Recurrent droughts increase risk of cascading tipping events by outpacing adaptive capacities in the Amazon rainforest.

ABSTRACT: Tipping elements are nonlinear subsystems of the Earth system that have the potential to abruptly shift to another state if environmental change occurs close to a critical threshold with large consequences for human societies and ecosystems. Among these tipping elements may be the Amazon rainforest, which has been undergoing intensive anthropogenic activities and increasingly frequent droughts. Here, we assess how extreme deviations from climatological rainfall regimes may cause local forest collapse that cascades through the coupled forest-climate system. We develop a conceptual dynamic network model to isolate and uncover the role of atmospheric moisture recycling in such tipping cascades. We account for heterogeneity in critical thresholds of the forest caused by adaptation to local cli

SUBMITTER: Wunderling N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9371734 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature