Amazon rainforest to wipe out by 2064 due to deforestation, scientist predicts

World’s largest tropical rainforest, Amazon rainforest will vanish by 2064 due to alarming levels of deforestation and droughts occurring in the region from the climate change. According to the predictions of the scientist Robert Walker in the new paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Environment, the green cover of 2.3 million square miles in South Africa will be wiped clean in 43 years as it is currently standing on a ‘tipping point’. 

Amazon rainforests are heavily credited for reducing air pollution on Earth and regulating the oxygen and carbon dioxide level while also creating its own precipitation to sustain local populations with freshwater. However, Walker who is a professor of geography at the University of Florida has predicted the degradation of the forests as a consequence of mankind’s disturbances. He has said that the forests will witness a transition over the next few decades, in which, they will change from moisture-filled forest to an ‘open savannah’.

Moreover, according to Walker, the dependency of the local population over the Amazon rainforests implies, “the magnitude of the catastrophe will be worse than heretofore imagined' in not more than 44 years. According to him, 2064 will be the year marking the ‘tipping point’ accompanied by extreme and frequent droughts.

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8% Of The Area Wiped Out In 18 Years

Meanwhile, a separate study by the Amazon Geo-Referenced Socio-Environmental Information (RAISG) network, revealed last month that owing to the escalated deforestation in the Amazon rainforests, it has already wiped out 8 per cent of the forest area in a matter of 18 years. As per the study, an area bigger than Spain has been destroyed in the Amazon forest due to deforestation. As per an update on the Amazon atlas, which has been produced by the same organization, 513,016 square kilometres of the rainforest have been lost. 

In a statement, RAISG said, “The Amazon is far more threatened than it was eight years ago”.

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Read - Amazon Rainforest: 8% Of The Area Wiped Out In 18 Years Due To Increased Deforestation