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  • Presentation | GC44A: Climate Change, Variability, and Impacts in Central and South America II Oral
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  • GC44A-01: Warming, Drying, and Forest Resilience: The Amazon under Quaternary Climate Extremes
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  • Location Icon252-254
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Author(s):
Ellen M Jorgensen, Brown University (First Author, Presenting Author)
James Russell, Brown University
Boyang Zhao, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Cyrus Li, Brown University
Mark Bush, Florida Institute of Technology
Ansis Blaus, Florida Institute of Technology


The Amazon rainforest, a vital hub of biodiversity, is threatened by changes in temperature, rainfall, and fire activity. Climate models struggle to predict the response of the rainforest to major climate changes, mainly due to lack of historical climate and ecological data from the Amazon basin. We use two lake sediment records from the forest basin to reconstruct the temperature, rainfall, fire, and vegetation history of the basin through the last interglacial period. Our data suggests that the rainforest experienced warmer and dryer conditions in the past, but remained a stable forest environment. However, we also find that the rainforest is facing unprecedented amounts of fire activity in the present, which complicates our understanding of forest resilience in our dynamic climate future.



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