Climate science researcher Katia Fernandes contributed to a large National Geographic-sponsored project to develop a tropical rainforest vulnerability index.
Climate science researcher Katia Fernandes contributed to a large National Geographic-sponsored project to develop a tropical rainforest vulnerability index.
The research, published recently in the scientific journal One Earth, will detect and evaluate the vulnerability of global tropical rainforests by focusing specifically on threats from changes to land-use and climate.
Fernandes, assistant professor of geological sciences at the U of A, explores in her research how fires and climate interact in biomes, which are large communities of flora and fauna within a major habitat. Fires in tropical humid forest biomes result from human activities associated with deforestation and agricultural practices. The intensity, frequency and spread of fires are also determined by these practices.
In the Amazon rainforest, for instance, fire variability from year to year depends greatly on oceanic conditions in the tropical Atlantic, which determines patterns of atmospheric circulation and, consequently, the occurrence of droughts. In Indonesia, on the other hand, spikes in fires can occur in years of normal precipitation if the fire season is anomalously warm, Fernandes has found.
Read more at University of Arkansas
Photo Credit: oadtz via Pixabay
