The Amazon is rapidly approaching a tipping point

The Amazon is now closer to an irreversible tipping point than any other time in the last 100,000 years, according to Professor Mark Bush of the Florida Institute of Technology. Beyond this threshold, the Amazon will begin to permanently transition from lush forests to grasslands with few trees. The transformation of the world's most valuable rainforest has been fueled by land use changes associated with human activities such as deforestation. The study reveals that the primary force pushing the Amazon toward its tipping point is unregulated …