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Biosphere–atmosphere interactions

Deforestation size influences rainfall

Nature Climate Change volume 7, pages 175–176 (2017)Cite this article

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Changes to the land surface, such as land clearing and logging of forest areas, impacts moisture cycling. Now a shift from small-scale to large-scale deforestation in the southern Amazon is found to modify the mechanisms and patterns of regional precipitation.

The average size of cleared areas in the Amazon (pictured) has increased over many regions since the 1980s. Deforestation modifies regional moisture cycling as it reduces the amount of water returned to the atmosphere by trees, but hydroclimatic impacts depend on both the spatial extent of deforested areas and how these surface changes affect atmospheric circulation1. Past observational and modelling studies have examined the effects of small-scale or large-scale deforestation, but the climatic effects of scale transitions have been little explored. Now, writing in Nature Climate Change, Jaya Khanna and colleagues report that deforestation expansion associated with a scale transition in the southern Amazon has increased dry season rainfall downwind of logged regions, but decreased rainfall in upwind areas2.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Jeffrey Q. Chambers is at the Department of Geography, University of California Berkeley, California 94720, USA and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA,

    Jeffrey Q. Chambers

  2. Paulo Artaxo is at the Institute of Physics, University of São Paulo, São Paulo 05508-091, Brazil,

    Paulo Artaxo

Authors
  1. Jeffrey Q. Chambers
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  2. Paulo Artaxo
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Correspondence to Jeffrey Q. Chambers or Paulo Artaxo.

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Chambers, J., Artaxo, P. Deforestation size influences rainfall. Nature Clim Change 7, 175–176 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3238

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