Abstract ID: 582

Managing the Amazon forest dieback

Current trends in agriculture, livestock, drought episodes, logging, and fire may cause the replacement or degradation of more than half of the Amazon’s mature forests over the next two decades, releasing 15 to 25 billion tons of carbon to the atmosphere, in a large-scale “forest dieback”. Equally robust trends in the demands for social and environmental quality from some important buyers of Amazon cattle and agricultural products, in the emergence of a market mechanism to compensate nations that slow their deforestation, and in advances in forest frontier governance capacity create the potential for avoiding or slowing this dieback. We review these trends and discuss the scientific gaps that must be filled if prospect of managing the forest dieback is to be realized.

Session:  LCLUC and Human Dimensions - Current and future trends of land-use/land-cover change and agricultural intensification.

Presentation Type:  Oral