ScienceDaily (Mar. 12, 2010) — A new NASA-funded study has concluded that Amazon rain forests were remarkably unaffected in the face of once-in-a-century drought in 2005, neither dying nor thriving, contrary to a previously published report and claims by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Canopy of the Amazon rain forest. A new study has concluded that Amazon rain forests were remarkably unaffected in the face of once-in-a-century drought in 2005, neither dying nor thriving, contrary to a previously published report and claims by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (Credit: iStockphoto/Warwick Lister-Kaye)
The comprehensive study published in the current issue of the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters used the latest version of the NASA MODIS satellite data to measure the greenness of these vast pristine forests over the past decade.
A study published in the journal Science in 2007 claimed that these forests actually thrive from drought because of more sunshine under cloud-less skies typical of drought conditions. The new study found that those results were flawed and not reproducible.
"This new study brings some clarity to our muddled understanding of how these forests, with their rich source of biodiversity, would fare in the future in the face of twin pressures from logging and changing climate," said Boston University Prof. Ranga Myneni, senior author of the new study.
The IPCC is under scrutiny for various data inaccuracies, including its claim -- based on a flawed World Wildlife Fund study -- that up to 40% of the Amazonian forests could react drastically and be replaced by savannas from even a slight reduction in rainfall.
"Our results certainly do not indicate such extreme sensitivity to reductions in rainfall," said Sangram Ganguly, an author on the new study, from the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute affiliated with NASA Ames Research Center in California.
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Geophysical Research Letters [Subscription neeeded/Requer assinatura]
Arindam Samanta
Department of Geography and Environment, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Sangram Ganguly
BAERI, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California, USA
Hirofumi Hashimoto
Department of Science and Environmental Policy, California State University, Monterey Bay, Seaside, California, USA
Sadashiva Devadiga
Sigma Space Corporation, at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, USA
Eric Vermote
Department of Geography, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA
Yuri Knyazikhin
Department of Geography and Environment, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Ramakrishna R. Nemani
Biospheric Science Branch, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California, USA
Ranga B. Myneni
Department of Geography and Environment, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
The sensitivity of Amazon rainforests to dry-season droughts is still poorly understood, with reports of enhanced tree mortality and forest fires on one hand, and excessive forest greening on the other. Here, we report that the previous results of large-scale greening of the Amazon, obtained from an earlier version of satellite-derived vegetation greenness data - Collection 4 (C4) Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI), are irreproducible, with both this earlier version as well as the improved, current version (C5), owing to inclusion of atmosphere-corrupted data in those results. We find no evidence of large-scale greening of intact Amazon forests during the 2005 drought - approximately 11%–12% of these drought-stricken forests display greening, while, 28%–29% show browning or no-change, and for the rest, the data are not of sufficient quality to characterize any changes. These changes are also not unique - approximately similar changes are observed in non-drought years as well. Changes in surface solar irradiance are contrary to the speculation in the previously published report of enhanced sunlight availability during the 2005 drought. There was no co-relation between drought severity and greenness changes, which is contrary to the idea of drought-induced greening. Thus, we conclude that Amazon forests did not green-up during the 2005 drought.
Received 11 December 2009; accepted 26 January 2010; published 5 March 2010.
Citation: Samanta, A., S. Ganguly, H. Hashimoto, S. Devadiga, E. Vermote, Y. Knyazikhin, R. R. Nemani, and R. B. Myneni (2010), Amazon forests did not green-up during the 2005 drought, Geophys. Res. Lett., 37, L05401, doi:10.1029/2009GL042154.
