Cerrado
node · earth · Central Brazil
The tropical savanna covering roughly two million square kilometres of central Brazil, immediately south and east of the Amazon, and the most species-rich savanna on Earth. It belongs in an Amazon Journey for two reasons that pull in opposite directions. It is downwind: the aerial rivers deflected south by the Andes pass over it, and its own deep-rooted vegetation recharges the aquifers that feed a majority of Brazil's hydrographic basins, so a weakened Amazon is a drier Cerrado and a cleared Cerrado is a drier southern Brazil. And it is the alternative: when the Amazon Soy Moratorium closed the Amazon biome to soy grown on newly cleared land, the frontier moved here, where no equivalent agreement existed and where the legal reserve requirement on private land is far lower. Roughly half the Cerrado's native vegetation is already gone - a higher proportion than the Amazon has lost - and it attracts a fraction of the attention. Displacement is not the same as prevention.
Read in · 1
Evidence · 1
Timeline
No dated observations are stored for this object. Atlas shows what was observed and when — it does not infer a history.
Connections · 0
Assembled narrative · 1
Assembled from 10 blocks · 1 evidence · 5 related
- Story
- The tropical savanna covering roughly two million square kilometres of central Brazil, immediately south and east of the Amazon, and the most species-rich savanna on Earth. It belongs in an Amazon Journey for two reasons that pull in opposite directions. It is downwind: the aerial rivers deflected south by the Andes pass over it, and its own deep-rooted vegetation recharges the aquifers that feed a majority of Brazil's hydrographic basins, so a weakened Amazon is a drier Cerrado and a cleared Cerrado is a drier southern Brazil. And it is the alternative: when the Amazon Soy Moratorium closed the Amazon biome to soy grown on newly cleared land, the frontier moved here, where no equivalent agreement existed and where the legal reserve requirement on private land is far lower. Roughly half the Cerrado's native vegetation is already gone - a higher proportion than the Amazon has lost - and it attracts a fraction of the attention. Displacement is not the same as prevention.
- Knowledge
- Cerrado
- Connections
- Flying Rivers (Aerial Rivers)
- Arc of Deforestation (Arco do Desmatamento)
- Amazon Soy Moratorium
- Evidence
- Supports the finding that the share of Amazon soy expansion occurring on newly deforested land fell sharply after the 2006 moratorium, and the observation that expansion shifted toward the Cerrado where no equivalent agreement applied. V55 verification basis: not retrieved in this session; the before-and-after percentages are deliberately not quoted.
Observed changes · 0
No public Signals are attached to this object. Signals show what changed and when it was observed — never a direction or a rank.
Actions
/atlas?object=REGION_CERRADO&experience=REGION_CERRADO