Suppose that due to climate change and development, the Amazon basin changes from a tropical rainforest to a savannah-grassland type environment. Would the replacement of the trees (by grasses) substantially change the oxygen balance of the area? Could such an area support a substantial human population? If the basin were to becokme something like the US grat Plains, would this have any bearing on climate change?
They’d be irrigable and produce one more production but if you had a gemstone on 'em, POOF! It’s gone!
Apparently, cutting down more trees–or if there’s another drought this summer–might mean that the whole forest will die.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10392615&pnum=0
No, impossible. We could kill every tree on the planet and it wouldn’t substantially change the oxygen balance of anywhere at all. Put quite simply forests don’t produce any significant amount of net oxygen. The idea that the Amazon produces oxygen comes from an incorrect teaching of plant physiology that seems to be very widepread in US schools.
In a nutshell while trees produce oxygen they also burn exactly as much oxygen. They are not net oxygen producers over any meaningful timescale.
Given that rainforests can’t suport humans at all as far as anyone can tell then the answer must be that it woudl suport a far, far higher human population than it does currently.
Hard to say, far to many unknowns. One thing we can say is that the massive release of cabron into the atmophere would accelarate the pace of climate change.
Thats why you get the engineers involved to make them plains instead grassland.
While I agree that trees are not huge O2 contributors, they do contribute more O2 that they consume. The cellulose in their trunks and branches was made from CO2 through photosynthesis. This carbon is never combined again with O2 by the tree.
By the tree, not much. By bacteria, and termites, an beetles, and fungi, and elephants, and …
In a tropical rainforest the vast majority, as in over 95%, of that carbon in the branches is returned to the atmosphere within 6 months of the tree dying. 99% is returned within a year.
Any budget that accounts for the oxygen added to the atmopsphere by the tree has to also account for the oxygen deficit the tree produces by adding reduced carbon to the biosphere. Whether that deficit is repayed by the tree itself or by various consumers and decomposers is of no consequence. The deficit is incurred by the tree and must ultimately be repayed. Hence trees produce no net oxygen. Over any meaningful timesclae they are oxygen neutral.