Deforestation-induced drying lowers Amazon climate threshold (opens in new tab)

Humanity is putting unprecedented pressures on the Amazon forest system through global warming and land use changes1,2. As the Amazon forest may undergo self-reinforcing transitions, these pressures could lead to system-wide changes across major parts of Amazonian ecosystems1–4. Here we apply a dynamical systems model to assess the local and far-reaching cascading transition risks towards degraded ecosystems in the Amazon biome under different Shared Socioeconomic Pathways. For these emission...