The trees of the Amazon rainforest are getting bigger

When the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased, the world’s largest rainforest in the Amazon has started to function as an increasingly efficient carbon store. Because of the carbon dioxide supplement, growth has become more efficient so that the average size of trees has increased over the past three decades.

The matter was published in Nature Plants magazine research.

An international group of researchers familiarized themselves with the tree statistics that have been collected from overgrown natural forests from different parts of Amazonia. There were almost 200 monitoring areas, and they were on average a good hectare in size.

The trees were classified as less than 20 cm thick, 20–40 cm thick, and more than 40 cm thick, and the growth of each size class was monitored by trunk volumes.

Made itthat in the entire region, trees in all size categories have become larger and larger over the decades. In relation to the previous situation of their class, the hulls have swelled by approximately the same amount in all size categories.

However, the total mass of the heaviest individuals has increased the fastest. The growth of the carbon stock is therefore focused on the giants that reach the forest above the other trees.

According to the researchers, the results cannot be explained by the normal growth of the forest, but rather speak specifically to a better availability of the carbon needed for growth.

The addition of carbon dioxide has boosted trees of all sizes. Large trees connect more eagerly than before in the sunshine of the canopy, and small trees can more easily utilize the scarce light of Siimes. So far, the benefits of climate change have affected Amazonia more than the harms.

However, the current situation does not guarantee that the downsides will not be rampant in the future. Forest growth can start to be disturbed by excessive heat, stronger storm winds, worse droughts and more frequent forest fires. They can hit the biggest trees particularly hard.

In addition, the fact that people are destroying the Amazonian forests is harmful for a long time, researchers emphasize from the British University of Birmingham in the bulletin. Even if efforts were made to restore it, it would not be very soon to get a grown-up vegetation with hundreds of years old giants, which collect carbon most efficiently.