Rainforest at Biosphere 2 offers glimpse into future of the Amazon
by Daniel Stolte | Florence Reminder & Blade Tribune
The rainforest at the University of Arizona’s Biosphere 2 in Pinal County. Chris Richards/University of Arizona
Tropical forests may be more resilient to predicted temperature increases under global climate change than previously thought, a study published in the journal Nature Plants suggests.
The results could help make climate prediction models more accurate, according to the authors — an international team led by scientists in the University of Arizona Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
The group studied data from the rainforest habitat at UA’s Biosphere 2 in Pinal County and compared them to measurements taken at natural tropical forest sites. Due to being encased under a glass dome, the tropical forest at Biosphere 2 is possibly the hottest tropical forest in the world, with temperatures reaching up to 40 degrees Celsius, about 6 C higher than maximum temperatures currently experienced by natural tropical forests and in the range of what scientists expect them to experience in the year 2100, absent major climate change mitigation.
