Julia Tavares, collects samples from the uppermost parts of the trees, which must be completed first … [+]
To figure out how to save the Amazon rainforest, an ecologist from Brazil led a massive series of expeditions to survey trees across the vast rainforest.
Climatic extremes such as floods and droughts have become more frequent and more intense in the last two decades in the Brazilian Amazon.
Julia Valentim Tavares, an ecologist and National Geographic Explorer based at Uppsala University in Sweden, explains that seasonal flooding is a key component of the Amazon rainforest, to which people, plants and animals have adapted, but now climate change is put these ecosystems under threat. .
“Our ability to predict Amazon forest responses to these climate changes is currently limited by a strong lack of understanding of the ecophysiological properties that drive tree responses to climate extremes,” she says, adding that to close that knowledge gap, she led a series of expeditions to build the first pan-Amazonian dataset of tree physiological properties related to water stress spanning nearly 3,000 km of the Amazon basin.
“This required an unprecedented field effort, where I led several multinational teams of dozens of people on complex month-long expeditions in Peru, Brazil and Bolivia for an entire year,” she says.
In a 2023 study, Tavares and her team showed for the first time which regions and tree species are most at risk of dying from drought, conclusively demonstrating how drought susceptibility supports carbon storage and species distribution. the whole basin.
“As part of the National Geographic and Rolex Perpetual Planet Amazon Expedition – which engages several teams conducting their studies on the impact of climate change on the Amazon River Basin from the Andes to the Atlantic, my team is investigating how changes in flooding , precipitation and air temperature can affect the structure, function and diversity of the Amazon floodplain forests.
Tavares explains that she looks at how trees function and how they relate to the forest around them, to understand plant-water relationships and the sensitivity of these forests to ongoing and future climate change.
Lucy Parker, a member of the LIDAR team, shows the map points, obtained by the scanner, on the tablet … [+]
Growing up in Brazil
Tavares was born and raised in the big Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro, but her grandmother was from the Amazon.
“My heart has always been connected to the Amazon – the forests, the culture and the people,” she says.
Tavares explains that ultimately, it was this passion that led her to pursue biology, and for the past 13 years, she has dedicated herself to studying the Amazon rainforest.
“Science has historically been dominated by white men from the Global North, often sidelined by women, ethnic minorities and people in the Global South, leading to unequal representation and perpetuating colonial approaches to science and politics,” she says.
Tavares explains that when she assembled the National Geographic Flooded Forest and Amazon Expedition’s Rolex Perpetual Planet team, she made sure that women were the majority on the team and/or people with connections to institutions in northern Brazil, as usually only Brazilian institutions from the south . regions are distinguished internationally.
“I am a mother of young twins and seeing women, especially mothers, as researchers inspires me to continue to pursue an academic career,” she says, “I hope that my path can now inspire others and open up more space. for women and scholars from the Global South.”
Before the State, Brazil.
Monkey Bridges in Brazil
Elsewhere in the Amazon, indigenous groups and researchers are literally building bridges together to help monkeys and other wildlife cross Brazil’s highways.
Brazil has over 2 million kilometers of highways, and a 2022 study estimated that those roads could kill 9 million medium- and large-sized mammals each year, with some species reaching more than 200,000 individuals annually.
Fernanda Abra, an associate researcher at the NGO Instituto de Pesquisas Ecologicas in Brazil, says the Reconecta project uses artificial canopy bridges to reduce the death of tree-dwelling animals in the Amazon caused by traffic on the BR-174, a 3,321-kilometer road long connecting Roraima State with the rest of the country.
“I really believe that reducing animal collisions on highways is very important in the fight to reduce biodiversity loss,” she says, adding that the project is being supported by the Waimiri-Atroari indigenous community, which was greatly affected by an increase in illegal deforestation. when the freeway was built in the 1970s.
