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Catastrophic Amazon tipping point less than 30 years away

Dr. Robert Walker‘s work was recently featured in Catastrophic Amazon tipping point less than 30 years away: study, an article in Mongabay.

The present study, led by Robert Walker at the University of Florida, Gainesville, combined projections of future agricultural expansion published by Brazil’s Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Food Supply (MAPA) and the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO), along with plans for the region’s industrial and infrastructure development, in order to estimate the total area of the Amazon basin that could be deforested by 2050.

They found that agricultural expansion and infrastructure development over the next thirty years could put the Amazon rainforest well beyond the tipping point for shifting to a savanna biome.