Research project on climate change:Raining huge amounts of CO2 in the Amazon forest
A giant research station unique in the world: AmazonFACE is investigating the impact of massive increases in CO2 concentrations on the rainforest in Brazil.
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What does the future look like for Brazil’s rainforests? And how to simulate it? An international team of scientists took on this challenge in one of the world’s largest open-air laboratories on 25,000 hectares of land – in the middle of a rainforest about 80 kilometers from Manaus.
AmazonFACE moves parts of the Amazon rainforest into a future with more carbon dioxide – like a time machine.
Prof. Mira Pöhlker, aerosol researcher
This is not only “very interesting”, but also unique, said researcher Prof. Mira Pohlker. To do this, scientists used technology that can be imagined as a giant CO2 rain and simulated an increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by up to 50 percent compared to current levels.
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The towers and nozzles “fertilize” the rainforest with CO2
Several rings, each consisting of ten steel towers and equipped with nozzles, “fertilize” the rainforest from ground level to treetops at a height of about 35 meters. This field testing of outdoor CO2 enrichment is the core of the program.
AmazonFACE stands for Free Air CO2 Enrichment. The experiment consisted of six FACE rings, including three treatment rings with a CO2-enriched atmosphere, and three control rings with air from the environment, i.e. without an increase in CO2 concentration. This research project will run for a period of ten years until 2030.
Austrian biologist Dr. At AmazonFACE, Lucia Fuchslueger studies interactions between plants and soil in response to increasing CO2 concentrations. “I’m very interested in what’s going on under our feet. It involves a lot of digging, but also a lot of laboratory work and analysis,” says the expert.
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Fly over the treetops in the rainforest to conduct research
Fuchslueger asked himself: How will the Amazon rainforest react to predictions of climate change in the coming decades? To do this, he often hovers on a large heron above the treetops in rainforest areas.
We tried to carry out an experiment of artificially increasing CO2 to see how individual trees and tree species react to it, whether they can absorb more CO2 or whether they have already reached their limit. Or maybe they don’t react at all.
Dr Lucia Fuchlueger, heads the nutrition research area at AmazonFACE
Trees and nutrient-poor soil form an ecosystem here that is representative of the entire Amazon region.
The AmazonFACE experiment from the air. From the 45 meter high crane you can see the rainforest and its entire infrastructure.
Source: Ralf Gemmecke
The project will run until 2030. Until then, the experiment should provide reliable data on how rainforests react to increasing CO2 content in the air and the “fertilization effect”. Either it suffers from it, maybe even gets stronger, or stops absorbing CO2 at some point.
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CO2 plunges rainforests into danger
The Amazon rainforest absorbs large amounts of climate-damaging greenhouse gases (CO2) and stores them as carbon. About 150 to 200 billion tonnes is tied up in biomass and soil – which is a huge CO2 sink. But deforestation, soybean monoculture and livestock farming, as well as rising temperatures, have pushed tropical forests to their limits.
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This system is in danger of collapsing. How do rainforests stay resilient? Can he regenerate? Too much CO2 in the atmosphere causes the earth to heat up unnaturally and triggers global climate change. What happens if CO2 storage itself releases carbon dioxide and emits more greenhouse gases than it absorbs?
In principle, tropical rainforests are very strong CO2 absorbers, but we do not know exactly how strong and to what extent this is.
Dr Lucia Fuchslueger, biologist at AmazonFACE
This experiment essentially brings the Amazon forest into the future today. The report provides realistic forecasts of the causes of global climate change and assists political decision makers – including at COP30 in Belém and future international climate conferences.
