The Amazon, a region nearly the size of the U.S., is by far the largest rainforest on earth. Biologists have warned for decades that its prodigious biodiversity was threatened by logging.
At 1,066 feet three feet higher than the Eiffel Tower it’s the tallest structure in South America. It’s also the centerpiece of a three-tower scientific complex called ATTO 150 miles northeast of the Amazon River’s largest city, Manaus. When fully outfitted, ATTO’s trio of towers will bristle with gas sniffers, particulate collectors, light sensors and scores of other instruments that continuously will watch over the forest and the air above it for at least the next two to three decades.
The Brazilian and German scientists overseeing research at ATTO say that the data collected by these instruments will provide an unprecedented portrait of the role that the Amazon jungle, the world’s largest rainforest, plays in the global carbon cycle a key finding in an era of climate change. And by taking these measurements including temperature, wind, greenhouse gases, ozone, radiation, visibility, tree canopy changes, soil temperatures and soil gas fluxes scientists will be able to track how global warming is affecting the Amazon, particularly its ability to absorb carbon.
This story is from the July 2016 edition of Sustainability Next.
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This story is from the July 2016 edition of Sustainability Next.
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