Earth & Environment - Posted by Keith Brannon-Tulane on Monday, July 19, 2010 11:21 - 2 Comments 
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(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5) Loading ...Amazon megastorm felled half a billion trees
Trunks of living trees can be seen two years after a powerful 2005 storm toppled neighboring trees, tearing open the ordinarily closed, green canopy of this stretch of Amazon forest near Manaus, Brazil. (Credit: American Geophysical Union)
TULANE (US)—A single, violent storm that swept across the Amazon forest in 2005 killed half a billion trees, far more than previously suspected, according to the first study to produce an actual body count of the losses.
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The text of this article by Futurity is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives License.
Amazon rainforests, which are thought to absorb a significant portion of carbon dioxide from the earth’s atmosphere, are an important bellwether for climate change researchers.
Tree loss in the Amazon is considered one of a number of potential “tipping points” related to issues of rapid climate change.
Previous research had attributed a peak in tree mortality in 2005 solely to a severe drought that affected parts of the forest.
The new study says that a single squall line of severe thunderstorms in January 2005 had an important role in the tree demise.
This type of storm might become more frequent in the future in the Amazon due to climate change, killing a higher number of trees and releasing more carbon to the atmosphere, according to the paper’s authors, Jeffrey Chambers, a forest ecologist at Tulane University and atmospheric scientist Robinson Negrón-Juárez.
The study is available online in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
Researchers used a combination of satellite images, field-measured tree mortality, and modeling to determine the number of trees killed by the storm.
By linking satellite data to field observations, the researchers were able to take into account smaller tree blowdowns (down to 7-10 trees per event) that otherwise cannot be detected through satellite images.
Between 441 and 663 million trees were destroyed by the storms, representing a loss equivalent to 23 percent of the estimated mean annual carbon accumulation of the Amazon forest.
Previous studies on tree mortality in the Amazon have diligently collected dead-tree tolls, Chambers says, but information on exactly what killed the trees is often lacking, or not reported at all.
“It’s very important that when we collect data in the field we do forensics on tree mortality,” he says.
“Under a changing climate, some forecasts say that storms will increase in intensity. If we start seeing increases in tree mortality, we need to be able to say what’s killing the trees.”
More news from Tulane University: http://tulane.edu/news
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2 Comments
Bill
Bill: Apologies for the headline typo. We’ve updated to reflect the correct number.
Am I missing something here? The title of the article says the storm felled 500,000 trees. The lead paragraph of the article says “half a billion”. Someone is off by 3 powers of 10 !
Either the title should say 500,000,000 trees or the copy should say half a million. Later in the article (paragraph 10) the author says “Between 441 and 663 million trees were destroyed. That would indicate the title is wrong, and it should say 500,000,000 trees. Which is correct?