Life Sciences Commons^™

A Tipping Point In The Ecuadorian Amazon Rainforest: Current And Future Land-Use And Climate Change Trends, Alula Shields

Masters Theses

Many regions of the Amazon are experiencing drastic changes as deforestation and climate change drive the world’s largest continuous rainforest towards a ‘tipping point’. These disturbances are changing natural cycles that once past a critical threshold, will mark an unstoppable transition to an altered ecosystem. Losing areas of the Amazon rainforest will have implications for the global climate, global carbon budget, and global hydrological regimes. Scholars have projected these tipping points for areas of the eastern Amazon rainforest, but much less scholarship focuses on the headwaters of the Western Amazon, an area of great cultural and biological importance. Ecuador is …