Moisture Recycling

Assembled from 32 blocks · 2 evidence · 37 related

1. Story
2. The process by which rain that has already fallen on the Amazon is returned to the atmosphere by the forest and falls again further inland. A mature Amazonian tree does not simply shed water; it lifts it. Roots reaching several metres down draw on soil moisture that shallow-rooted vegetation cannot reach, and the canopy transpires it at a rate of the order of three to four millimetres per day even in the dry season, when a pasture in the same place would have gone dormant. The first quantitative demonstration came from stable isotopes: Salati and colleagues showed in 1979 that the deuterium and oxygen-18 signature of rainfall changes systematically from the Atlantic coast inland in a way that ocean-derived vapour alone cannot produce, and inferred that roughly half of the basin's rainfall is water recycled within it. That is the mechanism the entire Journey turns on. It is also the mechanism that makes the forest's dry season survivable - the trees keep the atmosphere humid enough to bring the wet season back early, a process sometimes described as the forest starting its own rainy season.
3. Knowledge
4. Amazon Basin
5. Moisture Recycling
6. Connections
7. Amazon Basin
8. Flying Rivers (Aerial Rivers)
9. Cascading Moisture Recycling
10. Amazon Tall Tower Observatory (ATTO)
11. Amazon Deforestation
12. The Amazon Dieback Threshold
13. Eneas Salati
14. Isotope study quantifies Amazonian moisture recycling
15. The Amazon Tall Tower Observatory begins operating
16. Amazon River
17. Manaus
18. Moisture Recycling
19. Amazon Tall Tower Observatory (ATTO)
20. Brazil Nut Tree (Bertholletia excelsa)
21. Jaguar (Panthera onca)
22. Forest Degradation
23. Arc of Deforestation (Arco do Desmatamento)
24. BR-319 (Manaus-Porto Velho Highway)
25. The 2005 Amazon Drought
26. A drought in the southwestern basin reverses the carbon sink
27. A second severe drought follows within five years
28. Aircraft profiles show the eastern Amazon emitting more carbon than it absorbs
29. The UN climate conference convenes at the mouth of the Amazon
30. Evidence
31. Supports the claim that a large fraction of Amazonian rainfall is water recycled by the forest, established from the isotopic composition of rainfall across the basin. V55 verification basis: this session had no WebSearch budget and the egress proxy blocked every research domain, so the paper was neither retrieved nor read; the citation and the finding are stated from the producing model's knowledge and the exact recycled fraction is deliberately not quoted.
32. Supports the claim that forest-generated rainfall buffers downwind forest against drought, so that forest loss removes a buffer as well as a carbon store. V55 verification basis: not retrieved in this session; citation and finding stated from the producing model's knowledge, and the volume and page details should be confirmed by a curator.