Has the Amazon reached its ‘tipping point’?
The Amazon is a labyrinth of a thousand rivers. They are born at 21,000 feet, with seasonal melts from the Sajama ice cap in Bolivia, and they are born in the dark rock of Peru’s Apacheta cliff, as glacial seepage spraying white from its pores. … Where these tributaries empty, just south of the Equator, they form the aorta of the Amazon proper, more than 10 miles wide at its widest point. … By creating the conditions for a continental swath of evergreens, this process is crucial to the Amazon’s role as a global “sink” for carbon. Many scientists now fear, however, that this virtuous cycle is breaking down. Just in the past half-century, 17 percent of the Amazon — an area larger than Texas — has been converted to croplands or cattle pasture.