You think restricting CO2 emissions is a challenge? Limiting land use and access to marketable resources is a "non-starter" for the current global economic system and the governments that promote, support and maintain that system. Anthropocentrism is the foundational lens of modern "western culture".
I am enthused to see respected researchers exposing the need for a holistic, ecocentric world view. Thank you, Antonio and Anastassia.
This text (which I fully support) is authored by Antonio Donato Nobre. I have just found out that I can remove my name from the authorship line where it is by default. I did not know that, so the post was emailed as formally having two authors.
Antonio is calling things for what they really are.
Thank you, Antonio, for writing so clearly and compellingly about why we need to protect forests to keep the water cycle functioning properly in any climate.
And what an excellent summary of the mechanism behind the Biotic Pump theory by Anastassia and her colleagues (with input from Amazon researchers including you) in the section "When Trees Hold Up the Sky." Well done!
"...aided by cloud-seeds also emitted by the plants." First I heard of this. Trees producing ice nucleation particles? Do you have a literature link that supports it?
I've had Forest Ecology and never saw any references but that was honestly years ago and I retired and stopped reading forestry journals.
"Bioprecipitation." Native diverse mid-late succession ecosystems seed the atmosphere with ice nucleating bacteria as they transpirate, providing a crucial precursor component to inland precipitation events. Intact ecosystems produce a significant amount of their own water supply, alongside harvesting and storing water more effectively in the soil carbon sponge created by a combination of biochar, the liquid carbon pathway and ecosystem engineers such as beavers.
A few decades ago biotech researchers blamed ice nucleating bacteria for the frost blight impacting strawberry monocrops and attempted to release a genetically-modified version into the wild that does not ice nucleate. In reality the damage was due to low brix from destroyed soil food web and chronic monocropping, causing disease and frost susceptibility.
Ah another GMO attempt to fool mother nature and finding that they weren't all that brilliant. Wonder who the company was and how much taxpayer dough got forked over before the real mechanism was uncovered.
You could write more on cities indirecte effects on forest. This focus on protection of forest is narow boundary look.
Western countries has protected their own nature to some degree, but moved the nature destruction to Amazon. Imaging nature in Norway if Norway used its own Nature.
Bravo! Thank you Antonio Nobre for your honest and heartfelt words. And thank you Anastassia for posting them. This is the exactly the tone needed at this moment. Let us all distribute it as far and wide as we can.
In Massachusetts cities where space is limited, Amazon like forests are being planted. That is a high diversity (35 spp) of native woody plants planted close together. The benefits are in one mycorrhizal network where the needs of one plant are available to all. These forests planted by the Miyawaki method have ten times the plant and soil growth compared to a stand of one tree type. Thats a lot of carbon drawdown and long term storage. It’s a lot of water in deepening soils which means less water vapor in the atmosphere and longer periods of transpiration driving the biotic pump.
Good point about less water in the atmosphere. Given how powerful water vapor is as a greenhouse gas, this is an important consideration. Did primary forests evolve the ability not only to create rain but to regulate atmospheric water vapor? Walter Jehne points out the man-made humid hazes settling over major cities in India. Where else are such stagnations of water vapor happening due to loss of biotic water-cycling capacity?
Hi Antonio, One thing that may add more impact to this argument is the notion that deforestation changes the earths sensitivity to the co2 we are emitting, From the studies I have done, deforestation as you rightly point out dehydrates and raises temperature and lowers co2 drawdown but it also inhibits the formation of tall cumulonimbus cloud spires, breaking massive super cells into smaller lower cloud regimes. This has the effect of lower latent heat release into a denser atmosphere where it is reabsorbed instead of re radiated back into space. The effect is most pronounced in Africa with the massive deforestation on the eastern areas over the past 40y but is increasing in other parts of the world. Deforestation directly impacts sensitivity in so many ways so the impact of what we are emitting is effecting us so much more. Thanks again for you both.
The author writes that "the failure to model the Biotic Pump has a direct financial consequence: It allows billions to be funneled into bogus, short-term carbon offset schemes—such as tree farms that fail to replicate the complex hydrology of native forests—which look good on a carbon ledger but do nothing to restore the planet’s water cycle."
Yes, this is a good point and must be considered; I agree that some (or possibly many) current offsetting schemes are problematic. I don't know what Mr. Nobre believes about offsetting in general, so I don't want to insinuate. But, some carbon offsetting methods work, and some of them have channelled funds into larger-scale ecological restoration, I've read (see Paul Hawken's Drawdown). Instead of "all carbon offsetting is bad and must be stopped," (a popular stance right now), how about "carbon offsetting can be a tool with which funds (from polluters) are used to rebuild and protect carbon-storing natural systems, restore and protect watersheds and water cycles, and for which the design, maintenance, and verification rely on input from locals, indigenous people, and whole-systems ecological experts"?
Thanks. Just my first perusal in this but honestly ran across this in another unrelated paper on K-feldspar as a primary in the western USA. That said can you point to several more substantial papers on your thesis?
This one places it down on the list. Who are the most noted researchers you know?
Beautiful article, thank you. One other comment; the title seems maybe a bit ill fitting as the article itself talks about the need to acknowledge the importance of ocean-land-atmosphere water cycles in climate regulation and forests as their drivers. Maybe the title could be better put as something like this: Amazon's climate Engine needs us/our help?
Wellll. The problem is not just CO2 as you point out. And it's just not deforestation & the destruction of the Biotic Pump either. The Elephant is the duo of economic growth in an overpopulated planet..... overshoot if you will. Humans are completely incapable of controlling both these parameters. The biosphere will continue to degrade.. Therefore civilisation & environmental collapse (degrowth if you will) are locked in. No amount of COP'S or IPCC statements will help.
You think restricting CO2 emissions is a challenge? Limiting land use and access to marketable resources is a "non-starter" for the current global economic system and the governments that promote, support and maintain that system. Anthropocentrism is the foundational lens of modern "western culture".
I am enthused to see respected researchers exposing the need for a holistic, ecocentric world view. Thank you, Antonio and Anastassia.
Beg to differ. There has been plenty of providing of both imo
This text (which I fully support) is authored by Antonio Donato Nobre. I have just found out that I can remove my name from the authorship line where it is by default. I did not know that, so the post was emailed as formally having two authors.
Antonio is calling things for what they really are.
To be clear, I was thanking you, Anastassia, for posting Antonio's writing.
Thank you, Antonio, for writing so clearly and compellingly about why we need to protect forests to keep the water cycle functioning properly in any climate.
And what an excellent summary of the mechanism behind the Biotic Pump theory by Anastassia and her colleagues (with input from Amazon researchers including you) in the section "When Trees Hold Up the Sky." Well done!
"...aided by cloud-seeds also emitted by the plants." First I heard of this. Trees producing ice nucleation particles? Do you have a literature link that supports it?
I've had Forest Ecology and never saw any references but that was honestly years ago and I retired and stopped reading forestry journals.
I would suggest using Google Scholar and searching for bioaerosols ice nucleation.
"Bioprecipitation." Native diverse mid-late succession ecosystems seed the atmosphere with ice nucleating bacteria as they transpirate, providing a crucial precursor component to inland precipitation events. Intact ecosystems produce a significant amount of their own water supply, alongside harvesting and storing water more effectively in the soil carbon sponge created by a combination of biochar, the liquid carbon pathway and ecosystem engineers such as beavers.
A few decades ago biotech researchers blamed ice nucleating bacteria for the frost blight impacting strawberry monocrops and attempted to release a genetically-modified version into the wild that does not ice nucleate. In reality the damage was due to low brix from destroyed soil food web and chronic monocropping, causing disease and frost susceptibility.
Ah another GMO attempt to fool mother nature and finding that they weren't all that brilliant. Wonder who the company was and how much taxpayer dough got forked over before the real mechanism was uncovered.
You could write more on cities indirecte effects on forest. This focus on protection of forest is narow boundary look.
Western countries has protected their own nature to some degree, but moved the nature destruction to Amazon. Imaging nature in Norway if Norway used its own Nature.
https://www.idiv.de/urban-growth-causes-more-biodiversity-loss-outside-of-cities/
Bravo! Thank you Antonio Nobre for your honest and heartfelt words. And thank you Anastassia for posting them. This is the exactly the tone needed at this moment. Let us all distribute it as far and wide as we can.
In Massachusetts cities where space is limited, Amazon like forests are being planted. That is a high diversity (35 spp) of native woody plants planted close together. The benefits are in one mycorrhizal network where the needs of one plant are available to all. These forests planted by the Miyawaki method have ten times the plant and soil growth compared to a stand of one tree type. Thats a lot of carbon drawdown and long term storage. It’s a lot of water in deepening soils which means less water vapor in the atmosphere and longer periods of transpiration driving the biotic pump.
Good point about less water in the atmosphere. Given how powerful water vapor is as a greenhouse gas, this is an important consideration. Did primary forests evolve the ability not only to create rain but to regulate atmospheric water vapor? Walter Jehne points out the man-made humid hazes settling over major cities in India. Where else are such stagnations of water vapor happening due to loss of biotic water-cycling capacity?
Sailing blue water towards the shore, one may often see where the city is by the yellow haze spotting over the distant land.
Hi Antonio, One thing that may add more impact to this argument is the notion that deforestation changes the earths sensitivity to the co2 we are emitting, From the studies I have done, deforestation as you rightly point out dehydrates and raises temperature and lowers co2 drawdown but it also inhibits the formation of tall cumulonimbus cloud spires, breaking massive super cells into smaller lower cloud regimes. This has the effect of lower latent heat release into a denser atmosphere where it is reabsorbed instead of re radiated back into space. The effect is most pronounced in Africa with the massive deforestation on the eastern areas over the past 40y but is increasing in other parts of the world. Deforestation directly impacts sensitivity in so many ways so the impact of what we are emitting is effecting us so much more. Thanks again for you both.
Great article, as usual, here--thanks!
The author writes that "the failure to model the Biotic Pump has a direct financial consequence: It allows billions to be funneled into bogus, short-term carbon offset schemes—such as tree farms that fail to replicate the complex hydrology of native forests—which look good on a carbon ledger but do nothing to restore the planet’s water cycle."
Yes, this is a good point and must be considered; I agree that some (or possibly many) current offsetting schemes are problematic. I don't know what Mr. Nobre believes about offsetting in general, so I don't want to insinuate. But, some carbon offsetting methods work, and some of them have channelled funds into larger-scale ecological restoration, I've read (see Paul Hawken's Drawdown). Instead of "all carbon offsetting is bad and must be stopped," (a popular stance right now), how about "carbon offsetting can be a tool with which funds (from polluters) are used to rebuild and protect carbon-storing natural systems, restore and protect watersheds and water cycles, and for which the design, maintenance, and verification rely on input from locals, indigenous people, and whole-systems ecological experts"?
Yes, carbon offsetting as it should have been from the start.
Thanks. Just my first perusal in this but honestly ran across this in another unrelated paper on K-feldspar as a primary in the western USA. That said can you point to several more substantial papers on your thesis?
This one places it down on the list. Who are the most noted researchers you know?
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/385481006_The_limited_capacity_of_bioaerosols_to_serve_as_cloud-condensation_nuclei_may_restrict_their_potential_to_initiate_ice_formation_in_mixed-phase_clouds
Beautiful article, thank you. One other comment; the title seems maybe a bit ill fitting as the article itself talks about the need to acknowledge the importance of ocean-land-atmosphere water cycles in climate regulation and forests as their drivers. Maybe the title could be better put as something like this: Amazon's climate Engine needs us/our help?
Wellll. The problem is not just CO2 as you point out. And it's just not deforestation & the destruction of the Biotic Pump either. The Elephant is the duo of economic growth in an overpopulated planet..... overshoot if you will. Humans are completely incapable of controlling both these parameters. The biosphere will continue to degrade.. Therefore civilisation & environmental collapse (degrowth if you will) are locked in. No amount of COP'S or IPCC statements will help.
China Daily just published Antonio's appeal
https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202511/19/WS691d0177a310d6866eb2a2bd.html
Getting the Chinese seriously involved would matter a great deal.
This is simply very very good. Thank you Antonio.
( Thank you Anastassia for drawing attention to Antonio's article )