Rainforest to desert
The Independent published a story on July 23, 2006 revealing that the Amazon rainforest is in its second year of drought. The most alarming piece of news is that research carried out by the Massachusetts-based Woods Hole Research Centre on the Amazon river has concluded that the forest cannot withstand more than two consecutive years of drought without breaking down.
The original story can be found here, while the story has been archived here in full.
The study results reveal that the dying of the Amazon rainforest will spell a massive acceleration in global warming. (Trees help fix carbon dioxide from the air. When they die, they release it.) The Amazon rainforest faces the very real possibility of dying next year.The forest contains 90 billion tons of carbon, enough to increase the rate of global warming by 50 per cent.