Our analysis of 30 years of Amazon forest carbon dynamics, which was published last month in Nature, received widespread attention. A big thank you to many RAINFOR colleagues for making this study possible. We discovered that the capacity of Amazonian forests to sequester carbon has weakened, with potentially important implications for climate change. Using on-the-ground measurements from 321 long-term monitoring plots, we found a long-term decline in the rates of net increase in above-ground biomass. This is a consequence of the earlier growth rate increases levelling off over the past decade, and at the same time biomass mortality persistently increasing.
Among hundreds of media items worldwide here are just a few we picked out:
News and Views in Nature by Lars Hedin
News in Science
A blog commentary Amazon carbon sink is in decline as trees die off faster by Oliver Phillips and Roel Brienen in The Conversation
A dramatic piece for French Television
Australia: Amazon rainforest losing capacity to soak up co2 ABC.net.au
Colombia: Amazon losing ability to absorb carbon (El Colombiano, 23/03/2015)
Spain: El Mundo
Venezuela: Hoy Venezuela
U.K.: Magazine of the Royal Geographical Society
RAINFOR-Brasil postdoc position available with Profa. Beatriz Marimon and Prof. Oliver Phillips, funded by CNPq and based in Mato Grosso at UNEMAT Nova Xavantina.