Preparing for climate change in the
MA ZON
by Connor Murphy
On a Monday morning, a group of indigenous leaders, scientists, and forest managers rose at dawn at a research station in Peru’s Andean cloud forest. Sun splashed through the windows of a tall lecture hall, illuminating the ceiling’s long wooden beams. Inside, a translator worked with dozens of people to navigate scientific terms in three languages.
It was the first day of a workshop to discuss strategies to protect the Amazon. The Amazon is the largest tropical forest in the world, storing 40 percent of all tropical forest carbon and accounting for 15 percent of global photosynthesis. It covers more than 1.7 billion acres, stretching across nine countries. If the Amazon rainforest were a country, it would be the seventh largest in the world.
The carbon stored in this immense tropical forest is critical to the trajectory of climate change. The more carbon that remains locked up in trees, the less there is in the atmosphere. But deforestation and forest degradation (the death or removal of individual trees) are again on the rise. Exacerbating the issue, Brazil’s new president has signaled a lack of support for protected forest areas. And while these human pressures increase, climate change impacts are taking a toll, with drought and wildfires 4
Canopy
Winter 2019
ravaging areas of forest. While almost no fires occurred in indigenous reserves prior to 2006, wildfires are now seen every three to five years in drier regions.
On the frontlines of this struggle are land managers, government officials, and indigenous leaders responsible for managing and protecting the forests.
In the summer of 2018, Woods Hole Research Center scientists held four workshops to deliver the latest and best climate science to the people responsible for the future of the Amazon.
“Over the last decade, we’ve spent a lot of energy creating datasets on biomass and climate in the region. Too much of that information has stayed in the realm of scientific publications, and has not really reached managers in the region,” said WHRC scientist Dr. Marcia Macedo. “There are a lot of people on the ground working in this space— people who are hungry for information to help them adapt to climate change. We want to translate our science into accessible formats that can inform their day-to-day management and broader policy decisions.” The workshops were supported by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and held in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Brazil. All told, more than 125 attendees from at least 50 institutes took part in the weeklong trainings. The events were based around a
