DAY THIRTEEN: TAPAJOS NATIONAL FOREST, TERRA FIRMA AREA

• DANIEL NEPSTAD'S RAINFALL EXCLUSION EXPERIMENT

• LBA TOWER SITE

• FOREST PROCESSES EXPERIMENTS

Clear plastic panels allow light to reach forest
vegetation, but reroute rain water away from the
site in order to induce drought conditions.

Photos by Lucus Fortini

RAINFALL EXCLUSION EXPERIMENT:

By depriving the soils of rainfall in a 1 ha (100m x 100m) forested area, researchers are simulating future climate changes that would cause temperature and fire susceptability to increase in Amazonian rain forests.

This study addresses many important questions, such as "What is the threshold of drought beyond which rain forests become flammable?" These types of questions relate to conservation of Amazonian ecosystems, prevention of uncontrolled fires, environmental policy development, atmospheric carbon sequestration and many other topics that are timely in the face of the Greenhouse Effect and global climate change.

LBA TOWER AND FOREST PROCESSES EXPERIMENTS:

In addition to the dry-down experiment, measures of forest carbon flux, tree sap flow and other forest processes provide information about how forests might react to disturbances such as climte change and logging.

These measuring devices process information gathered in the atmosphere, soils, and within trees.