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The Amazon covers 6.9 million square kilometers (2.72 million square miles) across South America and is home to over 40,000 plant species, 1,300 bird species, and over 430 mammal species. Scientists believe it provides the Earth with between six and nine percent of all oxygen, which means it is important for life on our planet. However, between 15 and 17% of the Amazon has been lost to human activities, with that number continuing to grow.
What would happen if all of the Amazon were destroyed?
To begin with, there would be an enormous loss of life.
Including animals and plants, the Amazon is home to an astounding 10% of the known insect fauna.
Every animal and insect plays its part in the natural ecosystem around the planet, and even if the smallest insect goes extinct, it could have a huge ripple effect.
Sebastian Leuzinger, of Auckland University of Technology, wrote in The Conversation: “Perhaps the most drastic and least reversible impact would be the loss of wildlife diversity.
“Once the species are lost, they are lost forever and this would ultimately be the most damaging consequence of the Amazon culling.
“It would perhaps be worse than losing its role as a huge redistributor and storage of water and carbon.
“Last but certainly not least, there are around 30 million people living in and near the Amazon rainforest.
“The consequences of the loss of the forest as a provider of the above ecosystem services and as a source of food and habitat are unfathomable.
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Professor Leuzinger said: ‘If the Amazon cloud systems and its ability to recycle water were disrupted, the ecosystem would flip over and irreversibly turn into a dry savannah very quickly.
“Estimates of where this tipping point might lie range from 40 percent deforestation to just 20 percent loss of forest cover from the Amazon.
“Afforestation elsewhere to achieve the same amount of carbon storage is technically possible, but we have neither the time (it would take several hundred years) nor the land (at least an equivalent area would be required).
“Once the circulation of water through (partial) deforestation is stopped, there is a point of no return.
“Water does not disappear from the planet, but certainly from forest ecosystems, with immediate and powerful consequences for the world’s climate”.
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