title: Protecting the Amazon with protected areas.
abstract: This article addresses climate-tipping points in the Amazon Basin resulting from deforestation. It applies a regional climate model to assess whether the system of protected areas in Brazil is able to avoid such tipping points, with massive conversion to semiarid vegetation, particularly along the south and southeastern margins of the basin. The regional climate model produces spatially distributed annual rainfall under a variety of external forcing conditions, assuming that all land outside protected areas is deforested. It translates these results into dry season impacts on resident ecosystems and shows that Amazonian dry ecosystems in the southern and southeastern basin do not desiccate appreciably and that extensive areas experience an increase in precipitation. Nor do the moist forests dry out to an excessive amount. Evidently, Brazilian environmental policy has created a sustainable core of protected areas in the Amazon that buffers against potential climate-tipping points and protects the drier ecosystems of the basin. Thus, all efforts should be made to manage them effectively.
authors: Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48823, USA. rwalker@msu.edu
authors: Robert
authors: R
authors: Walker
authors: Nathan J
authors: NJ
authors: Moore
authors: Eugenio
authors: E
authors: Arima
authors: Stephen
authors: S
authors: Perz
authors: Cynthia
authors: C
authors: Simmons
authors: Marcellus
authors: M
authors: Caldas
authors: Dante
authors: D
authors: Vergara
authors: Claudio
authors: C
authors: Bohrer
mesh_terms: D000383:Agriculture / Q000379:methods; D001938:Brazil; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence / Q000379:methods*; D017753:Ecosystem; D005843:Geography; D017752:Greenhouse Effect; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D011891:Rain; D012621:Seasons; D014329:Tropical Climate