This Partnership for International Research and Education (PIRE) addresses a fundamental earth system science question that cannot be answered without a strong collaboration between scientists in North and South America: what is the future of Amazon forests under climate change?
Models that simulate the interaction of climate with carbon and water cycles, mediated by vegetation, suggest that these forests will collapse due to global warming-induced drying. But other models predict resilience. Since the current knowledge is insufficient to resolve the discrepant predictions, this project is conducting a suite of long-term observations, integrated with modeling, to improve our understanding of forest-climate interactions in the Amazon.
