The Amazon

Rain Clouds over Amazonian Forest

The Amazon rainforest is one of the world’s greatest conservation challenges. This vast equatorial ecosystem is home to one fifth of the planet’s plant and animal species, more than 200 indigenous cultures, and 30 million people in search of sustenance and wealth. Carbon stocks equivalent to more than a decade of global fossil fuel emissions are stored in the wood of its trees. Even slight climate-induced changes in the forest’s metabolism could undo the modest gains of the Kyoto Protocol in slowing global warming. The forest also releases enough water to the atmosphere via evapotranspiration and to the ocean via river outflow to influence world climate and ocean circulation systems; and in doing so it also sustains the regional climate on which it depends.

Land use, Deforestation and Fire in the Amazon

Smoke obscures the sun during burning season

The Amazon basin ecosystem has historically been protected from threats due to its isolation – access was difficult, there were limited settlements, and resource extraction was confined to immediate margins of navigable rivers. Throughout the 1960’s and 1970’s, new roads and colonization projects settled millions of people into the region. In three decades, 15% of the Amazon forest was clear-cut and 4 or 5% was degraded through timber harvest or fire. Each year, an average of 18,000 km² of forest are felled—an area larger than Massachusetts and half the size of Costa Rica. During the 1998 El Niño episode, forest loss was accelerated through the downward spiral of land use, drought and fire. Forty thousand square kilometers of dried out forest burned during that year. In these areas half of the adult trees were killed, wildlife was devastated, and the likelihood of recurrent fire increased.

Map of US overlaid on Amazon Basin

A Challenge to Conservation

The Amazon emerges as a rare opportunity for comprehensive conservation, because it remains mostly undisturbed. Eighty percent of the forest is still standing, and forest-dependent economies have proven themselves to be competitive with forest-replacing economies. It is not too late to devise ways of managing the Amazon rainforest to protect its biological diversity, its hydrologic functions, and its critical role in climate regulation, while also addressing the needs and aspirations of its people.

The Amazon Program

The Woods Hole Center’s Amazon Program integrates scientific research, policy analysis, natural resource management systems, and education to help promote comprehensive conservation of the world’s largest tropical rainforest. With more than 20 institutional partners in South and North America and the devotion of eight staff members, this program is helping to lay the groundwork for ecologically sustainable, socially just, and economically viable development in the Amazon basin. A commitment to rigorous scientific research lies at the core of the program, along with informing policy analyses, forming strategic alliances with partners, and education. Program activities and field research is carried out throughout the region, including along the region’s new economic arteries—the highways that are being paved into the core of the Amazon- and expanding agricultural frontiers. Our goal is to use our scientific knowledge to explore new paths to development in the Amazon that will lead to a sustainable future for the region and its population.

©Woods Hole Research Center, 2007