Protecting the Amazon with protected areas

TLDR

The Amazon Basin faces climate‑tipping points driven by deforestation. The study uses a regional climate model to evaluate whether Brazil’s protected areas can prevent such tipping points and recommends effective management of these areas. The model generates spatially distributed annual rainfall under various forcing scenarios, assuming all non‑protected land is deforested. Results indicate that protected areas maintain adequate precipitation for dry ecosystems in the south and southeast, prevent excessive drying of moist forests, and overall buffer the basin against climate tipping, supporting the sustainability of Brazil’s protected core.

Abstract

This article addresses climate-tipping points in the Amazon Basin resulting from deforestation. It applies a regional climate model to assess whether the system of protected areas in Brazil is able to avoid such tipping points, with massive conversion to semiarid vegetation, particularly along the south and southeastern margins of the basin. The regional climate model produces spatially distributed annual rainfall under a variety of external forcing conditions, assuming that all land outside protected areas is deforested. It translates these results into dry season impacts on resident ecosystems and shows that Amazonian dry ecosystems in the southern and southeastern basin do not desiccate appreciably and that extensive areas experience an increase in precipitation. Nor do the moist forests dry out to an excessive amount. Evidently, Brazilian environmental policy has created a sustainable core of protected areas in the Amazon that buffers against potential climate-tipping points and protects the drier ecosystems of the basin. Thus, all efforts should be made to manage them effectively.