News: The AmazonFACE project, situated near the city of Manaus, seeks to explore how climate change will influence the Amazon rainforest, its rich biodiversity, and the ecosystem services it provides to humankind.
About AmazonFACE Programme
- Led by: National Institute for Amazon Research (INPA) in collaboration with several international partners.
- Location: The programme is a large-scale field experiment located near Manaus, Brazil.
- AmazonFACE marks the first-ever application of FACE technology in tropical rainforests.
- It is designed to expose sections of old-growth Amazon forest to future levels of atmospheric CO₂ using Free-Air CO₂ Enrichment (FACE) technology.
- Objective: To study how the Amazon rainforest will adapt to increasing CO₂ levels and changing climate conditions.
- Structure: The experimental area contains six large rings of steel towers that rise above the rainforest canopy. Each ring surrounds groups of 50 to 70 mature trees, forming individual research plots for the experiment.
- Experimental Design
- After the initial baseline testing, scientists will release CO₂ into three of the six rings to simulate the atmospheric conditions expected in future decades.
- The remaining three rings will serve as control plots, allowing researchers to compare the responses of trees exposed to elevated CO₂ with those in normal conditions.
- Working mechanism:
- FACE systems release controlled amounts of CO₂ into open-air forest plots.
- This method simulates elevated CO₂ conditions without enclosing the vegetation, allowing researchers to study natural forest responses.
- The project uses FACE (Free-Air CO₂ Enrichment) technology, which allows CO₂ to be released directly into the open-air environment without enclosing the vegetation.
- Sensors installed across the site record data every 10 minutes, tracking how trees absorb carbon dioxide, release oxygen, and emit water vapor. These sensors also measure how trees respond to rainfall, storms, sunlight, and other environmental factors.
- In later phases, scientists will simulate future atmospheric conditions, such as CO₂ levels expected in 2050 or 2060, to observe long-term ecosystem responses.
- Scientific and Environmental Significance
- The Amazon rainforest plays a vital role in regulating the global climate and absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
- Understanding how the forest reacts to increased CO₂ levels is essential for predicting its future ability to act as a carbon sink.
- The data will help scientists refine climate models and guide global environmental policies focused on carbon management and forest conservation.
- This research is particularly important at a time when wildfires and climate crises are intensifying worldwide.
