What If We CLEARED the Amazon?

the Amazon rainforest is spectacular it's by far the largest forest on earth and is home to some of the most impressive plants and animals ever discovered but more and more today news about the Amazon has shifted away from the amazing discoveries inside to focus on the issues currently plaguing the forest namely deforestation and all the side effects associated with it currently the Amazon is the world's largest deforestation front with 25 fronts that all exists inside 9 developing nations meaning each one is trying to use their natural resources to improve their development and living conditions all in all roughly 20% of the Amazon rainforest has been cleared so far to make room for things like livestock defeat growing global demand and soy farms to feed the livestock and it's predicted to reach 27% by the year 2030 but let's just say for some reason we lost control and clear-cut 100 percent of the rainforest in some sort of ecocidal rage what would happen well first five and a half million square kilometres of land previously covered by rainforests would be left entirely barren in total we would have cut approximately 390 billion trees down eventually these trees would decompose in anywhere between 90 to 140 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide would enter our atmosphere this is about equal to 3 to 5 times what we emit annually worldwide for carbon dioxide surprisingly there's actually little net gain in oxygen produced from the forests as the process of growth and decay are essentially equal in a stable forest but even still with all the added co2 we all might have a harder time simply breathing on the planet this change to the atmosphere would also affect the oceans the increased concentration of co2 in the atmosphere would translate into more dissolved co2 in ocean water making the whole ocean more acidic this in turn would damage sensitive marine life like coral and microscopic organisms and lead to things like bleaching and mass die-offs long story short this event would have huge rippling effects throughout essentially every part of the planet most of which would be negative changes but trees aren't the only thing that lives in the Amazon in fact one out of every ten known species calls the amazon home and this region is by the world's greatest collection of life on Earth that means 40,000 plant species gone 2.5 million insect species would be gone 1300 bird species gone 400 mammals gone and 400m Vivien's gone you get the picture that's not even counting the 31 million people who live in the lie on the Amazon rainforest for their survival but now let's take a look at what a cleared Amazon would mean for the region without any trees or plants to hold the soil in place the entire region would experience drastic degrees of erosion the rainforest now is situated in the largest drainage basin in the world and all that water would carry with it the now infertile soils with no plants to help absorb the water the amount of runoff would increase as well and very quickly these waters would wash away any and all fertile soil the Amazon River would likely flow murky brown from all the sediments and we might even see the Amazon Delta extend further into the Atlantic Ocean due to all of the deposited sediments this event would also have a tremendous negative impact on the economics of the concerned countries within the Amazon region the rainforest accounts for 70% of the economic activity this includes industries like agriculture and tourism without the forests these industries would collapse and these already struggling countries would encounter even greater economic hardship and the road to recovery would be a long one another unforeseen impact would be on the world of medicine and pharmaceutics today the rainforest produces 25% of the plants used in our medicines and it's estimated that less than 1% of all flowering plants in the Amazon have been closely studied for medicinal benefits so there are likely still heaps of medicinal plants just waiting to be found clear-cutting would cut off this huge medical resource and rule out any further discoveries in the region but by far the largest impact of this event would be the change in the Earth's weather systems to understand this first you need to know about a process called transpiration sometimes called the evapotranspiration in short as part of the process of photosynthesis plants release water vapour from their leaves into the atmosphere this water vapor floats up to become clouds to become rain and this isn't a neglect Abul amount of water a single oak tree can transpire 40,000 gallon of water a year and just one acre of something like corn can give off up to four thousand gallons of water a day plants actually use very little of the water they take in and will usually transpire over 97% of what they've absorbed from the ground it's been measured that plant life on Earth accounts for 10 to 15% of all the water in the atmosphere with the rest of course supplied by the oceans that's a crazy amount of water when you think about it look here's a picture of part of the Amazon rainforest you'll notice you can barely see anything through the layer of numerous small clouds created by transpiration basically the forest creates its own rain and this is what preserves the ecosystem here take away trees and there's less transpiration take them all away and yeah there's no more rain this is part of the reason why this region recently has been experiencing drought as the impacts of cutting 20% of the forests have already begun to take effect but the impacts of this would not be restricted to the Amazon region alone everywhere on the South American continent would see reduced rainfall and researchers at Princeton University found this would even severely decreased precipitation all along the North American west coast you know that place with all the fires because it hasn't been raining much estimates predict that places as far away as the Sierra Nevadas could see a 50% decrease in annual precipitation as a result of this event this combined with the added carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would likely cause dramatic shifts in climate worldwide possibly creating a global drought but after all these changes what would we find where the forest once was first and most importantly the rainforests would not return as I just explained without the trees rains would be less frequent in the region and without those rains a rainforest could not grow you see the Amazon formed during the Eocene epoch up to 56 million years ago when the whole world was a lot warmer and wetter under these conditions rainforests could be found across the planet but as the planet began to cool these rainforests receded until only a few surviving rainforests were left at the tropics these remained intact only because they were able to artificially create climate conditions similar to the times when they formed taking away these force essentially ends these conditions for good in its place would be a swath of scarred land that's not good for any commercial use besides the rain the forest also helps maintain the health and fertility of the soil and without it the field would quickly wither and erode because of this it would it be useful for large-scaled long-term agriculture without heavy use of fertilizers for this reason the land would eventually be left alone for nature to take its course in this event plants would slowly reclaimed the land but in the place of the once a mighty Amazon rainforest would likely be an extensive grassland region interspersed with occasional Woodlands similar to the climate of eastern central Africa like the Serengeti as these regions both exist at the same latitude a similarly functioning ecosystem would begin to form likely with large herds of grazing animals these could possibly even be the ancestors of escaped farm animals from Brazil's huge livestock industry but it would never come close to the grandeur of the rainforest that preceded it if there's one takeaway from this video it should be this when it comes to clearing any part of the Amazon the immediate benefits can never outweigh the long-term costs and doing so has far-reaching consequences on not only the region but the world and once it's done it can't be undone I guess there are a couple things I'd like you to take away from this video actually anyway if you're interested in helping to conserve what remains of the Amazon and of all the world's rainforests for that matter there's a number of great charities and organizations out there working with that cause in mind other than that I hope you enjoyed if you did and you want to see more give this video a like and subscribe and I'll be back next week with another video follow me on Twitter to see updates on videos and to see when I post new ones if you're curious about other hypothetical ways to destroy the earth you should check out this video about what would happen if Antarctica melted other than that thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: Atlas Pro

Views: 1,615,466

Rating: 4.9028869 out of 5

Keywords: education, geography, science, Amazon, Rainforest, logging, logged, brazil, colombia, ecuador, peru, venezuela, bolivia, clear cut, jungle, agriculture, brazillian, environment, ecosystems, earth, atlas pro, fire, burning, burn, flame, flaming, fires, pray, amazonia, amazona

Id: hb3b-A6QAc8

Length: 8min 24sec (504 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 03 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/YOUREABOT]

Great content! But that background music was distracting.

[u/[deleted]]

wow, and all in one breath

[u/Janek11012002]

Great video! :)