Caxuiana Drought Experiment
Caxuiana is part of a Tropical Ecology and Early Monitoring System of tropical forests around the world. It was built 10 years ago to conduct vital research on the potential impact of multiple droughts on the Amazon Rainforest as the Climate Systems starts to change.
A huge roof has been built over the rainforest the size of several football fields in the remote north-west of the Amazon, only accessibly by at 36 hour boat trip.
As the Amazon Rainforest is a major storage unit for Carbon Dioxide, any change to reduce this storage has the potential to affect our climate system, and push more CO2 into the Oceans and the Atmosphere, causing further destabilisation of our planets intricate “living system”. Recording, observing and understanding the plight of the largest tropical rainforest on our planet is important in building an adaptation plan for the future of our species and our planet.
Here Yadvinder Malhi and Peter Cox with local Brazilian scientists explore the Amazon Rainforests future and ours!
