The rainforest is quite useful you know - Part 2

We've already established that the rainforest can be used to develop medicine. But how else might it be useful?

As a carbon sink. As plant species require carbon dioxide to survive it means that large areas of forest are able to take in large amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Going on the consensus that we live in a world with increasing levels of carbon dioxide, which has been said to contribute towards an increase in global temperature levels (IPCC, 2013), large areas of plant life can only be seen as beneficial towards global carbon dioxide levels.

Not a carbon sink

However, there is a danger fast approaching. The rainforests, in particular the Amazon, are approaching a tipping point. This has been seen to be the point at which the rainforest begins to emit carbon rather than take it in from the atmosphere. This is due to deforestation and more recently, drought. Lewis et al (2011) study the effects the droughts of 2005 and 2010 had on the carbon sink effect of the Amazon rainforest (carbon sinks in this case are also known as bio-sequestration). The study mentioned that these two years of drought both contributed carbon dioxide to the atmosphere in terms of 2.2 billion metric tons in 2010 and 1.6 billion metric tons in 2005. When the Amazon was only contributing 0.4 billion metric tons each year as a carbon sink on average these figures stand out fairly substantially. This was particularly alarming as both drought events were supposed to be one in one hundred year events but happened twice within the space of six years. A sign for the future perhaps? With drought conditions becoming more regular in our rainforests, the days of a carbon sink may be coming to an end.

That's all for now.