{"id":853,"date":"2014-09-16T15:20:50","date_gmt":"2014-09-16T19:20:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/?p=853"},"modified":"2021-10-18T11:15:04","modified_gmt":"2021-10-18T15:15:04","slug":"drought-in-brazil-highlights-regional-impacts-of-deforestation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/2014\/09\/drought-in-brazil-highlights-regional-impacts-of-deforestation\/","title":{"rendered":"Drought in Brazil highlights regional impacts of deforestation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <em>Climate News Network<\/em> produced an article this week describing how the recent unprecedented drought in Brazil has highlighted the importance of the Amazon rainforest in the regional water budget.\u00a0 The rainforest is being chopped down in many areas, in many cases to grow soybeans and other agricultural crops as well as for lumber.\u00a0 Ironically, the removal of the forests may be reducing rainfall to the area by removing the ability of the trees to pump humidity into the atmosphere.\u00a0 Antonio Nobre, one of Brazil&#8217;s leading climate scientists, explains it this way:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDestroying the Amazon to advance the agricultural frontier is like shooting yourself in the foot. The Amazon is a gigantic hydrological pump that brings the humidity of the Atlantic Ocean into the continent and guarantees the irrigation of the region.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOf course, we need agriculture,\u201d he said. \u201cBut without trees there would be no water, and without water there is no food.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA tonne of soy takes several tonnes of water to produce. When we export soy we are exporting fresh water to countries that don\u2019t have this rain and can\u2019t produce. It is the same with cotton, with ethanol. Water is the main agricultural input. If it weren\u2019t, the Sahara would be green, because it has extremely fertile soil.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>You can read the full article <a title=\"Amazon drought and deforestation\" href=\"https:\/\/www.truthdig.com\/report\/item\/drought_bites_as_amazons_flying_rivers_dry_up_20140914\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Climate News Network produced an article this week describing how the recent unprecedented drought in Brazil has highlighted the importance of the Amazon rainforest in the regional water budget.\u00a0 The rainforest is being chopped down in many areas, in many cases to grow soybeans and other agricultural crops as well as for lumber.\u00a0 Ironically, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climate-and-ag-in-the-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/58"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=853"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22773,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853\/revisions\/22773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}