Are Extreme Storms Reshaping the Amazon Faster Than We Realize?

Abstract information

In this video, JOSE DAVID URQUIZA-MUÑOZ investigates how extreme convective storms are increasingly reshaping the Amazon through large-scale windthrows. By analyzing over 9,000 Landsat images from 1985-2020, he identifies a sharp rise in these destructive events, concentrated in central and western forest hotspots. His findings show that windthrows significantly affect carbon balance, biodiversity, and forest recovery - impacts likely to intensify with climate change. Urquiza-Muñoz also highlights new tools like LiDAR and introduces the Windthrow Inventory Database to support future ecological and climate modeling.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21036/LTPUB101215

Researcher

Jose David Urquiza-Muñoz, PhD., works as a postdoc in the Department of Biogeochemical Processes at the Max Planck Institute and is a member of the International Max Planck Research School for Global Biogeochemical Cycles (IMPRS-gBGC). His research focuses on geospatial ecology and the spatiotemporal variations of forest ecosystem attributes in the Amazon. Urquiza-Muñoz has co-authored multiple publications on large-scale windthrows, forest recovery, and greenhouse gas emissions in the Amazon basin, contributing to the understanding of tropical forest dynamics under environmental stress.

Institution information

Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry

The research is dedicated to the study of global biogeochemical cycles and their long-term interactions with the biosphere, the atmosphere, the geosphere and the entire climate system. We want to better understand how living organisms - including humans - exchange basic resources such as water, carbon, nitrogen and energy with their environment and how this affects global climate and ecosystems. Biogeochemistry is the science of the Earth's metabolism. Elements essential to life such as carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and phosphorus are constantly undergoing biological, chemical and physical transformations as they are exchanged between different parts of the Earth, the lithosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere and atmosphere. The "biogeochemical cycles" quantitatively describe the distribution and exchange of elements between these components of the Earth system.

Original Publication

Increased Occurrence of Large-Scale Windthrows Across the Amazon Basin

Citation

Jose David Urquiza-Munoz, 

Latest Thinking, 

Are Extreme Storms Reshaping the Amazon Faster Than We Realize?, 

https://doi.org/10.21036/LTPUB101215, 

Credits:

© Jose David Urquiza-Munoz

and Latest Thinking

This work is licensed under CC-BY 4.0