the Amazon rainforest is spectacular
it's by far the largest forest on earth
and is home to some of the most
impressive plants and animals ever
discovered but more and more today news
about the Amazon has shifted away from
the amazing discoveries inside to focus
on the issues currently plaguing the
forest namely deforestation and all the
side effects associated with it
currently the Amazon is the world's
largest deforestation front with 25
fronts that all exists inside 9
developing nations meaning each one is
trying to use their natural resources to
improve their development and living
conditions all in all roughly 20% of the
Amazon rainforest has been cleared so
far to make room for things like
livestock defeat growing global demand
and soy farms to feed the livestock and
it's predicted to reach 27% by the year
2030
but let's just say for some reason we
lost control and clear-cut 100 percent
of the rainforest in some sort of
ecocidal rage what would happen well
first five and a half million square
kilometres of land previously covered by
rainforests would be left entirely
barren in total we would have cut
approximately 390 billion trees down
eventually these trees would decompose
in anywhere between 90 to 140 billion
metric tons of carbon dioxide would
enter our atmosphere this is about equal
to 3 to 5 times what we emit annually
worldwide for carbon dioxide
surprisingly there's actually little net
gain in oxygen produced from the forests
as the process of growth and decay are
essentially equal in a stable forest but
even still with all the added co2 we all
might have a harder time simply
breathing on the planet this change to
the atmosphere would also affect the
oceans the increased concentration of
co2 in the atmosphere would translate
into more dissolved co2 in ocean water
making the whole ocean more acidic this
in turn would damage sensitive marine
life like coral and microscopic
organisms and lead to things like
bleaching and mass die-offs long story
short this event would have huge
rippling effects throughout essentially
every part of the planet most of which
would be negative changes but trees
aren't the only thing that lives in the
Amazon in fact one out of every ten
known species calls the amazon home and
this region is by
the world's greatest collection of life
on Earth that means 40,000 plant species
gone 2.5 million insect species would be
gone 1300 bird species gone 400 mammals
gone and 400m Vivien's gone you get the
picture that's not even counting the 31
million people who live in the lie on
the Amazon rainforest for their survival
but now let's take a look at what a
cleared Amazon would mean for the region
without any trees or plants to hold the
soil in place the entire region would
experience drastic degrees of erosion
the rainforest now is situated in the
largest drainage basin in the world and
all that water would carry with it the
now infertile soils with no plants to
help absorb the water the amount of
runoff would increase as well and very
quickly these waters would wash away any
and all fertile soil the Amazon River
would likely flow murky brown from all
the sediments and we might even see the
Amazon Delta extend further into the
Atlantic Ocean due to all of the
deposited sediments this event would
also have a tremendous negative impact
on the economics of the concerned
countries within the Amazon region the
rainforest accounts for 70% of the
economic activity this includes
industries like agriculture and tourism
without the forests these industries
would collapse and these already
struggling countries would encounter
even greater economic hardship and the
road to recovery would be a long one
another unforeseen impact would be on
the world of medicine and pharmaceutics
today the rainforest produces 25% of the
plants used in our medicines and it's
estimated that less than 1% of all
flowering plants in the Amazon have been
closely studied for medicinal benefits
so there are likely still heaps of
medicinal plants just waiting to be
found
clear-cutting would cut off this huge
medical resource and rule out any
further discoveries in the region but by
far the largest impact of this event
would be the change in the Earth's
weather systems to understand this first
you need to know about a process called
transpiration sometimes called the
evapotranspiration in short as part of
the process of photosynthesis plants
release water vapour from their leaves
into the atmosphere this water vapor
floats up to become clouds to become
rain and this isn't a neglect Abul
amount of water a single oak tree can
transpire 40,000 gallon
of water a year and just one acre of
something like corn can give off up to
four thousand gallons of water a day
plants actually use very little of the
water they take in and will usually
transpire over 97% of what they've
absorbed from the ground it's been
measured that plant life on Earth
accounts for 10 to 15% of all the water
in the atmosphere with the rest of
course supplied by the oceans that's a
crazy amount of water when you think
about it look here's a picture of part
of the Amazon rainforest you'll notice
you can barely see anything through the
layer of numerous small clouds created
by transpiration basically the forest
creates its own rain and this is what
preserves the ecosystem here take away
trees and there's less transpiration
take them all away and yeah there's no
more rain this is part of the reason why
this region recently has been
experiencing drought as the impacts of
cutting 20% of the forests have already
begun to take effect but the impacts of
this would not be restricted to the
Amazon region alone everywhere on the
South American continent would see
reduced rainfall and researchers at
Princeton University found this would
even severely decreased precipitation
all along the North American west coast
you know that place with all the fires
because it hasn't been raining much
estimates predict that places as far
away as the Sierra Nevadas could see a
50% decrease in annual precipitation as
a result of this event this combined
with the added carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere would likely cause dramatic
shifts in climate worldwide possibly
creating a global drought but after all
these changes what would we find where
the forest once was
first and most importantly the
rainforests would not return as I just
explained without the trees rains would
be less frequent in the region and
without those rains a rainforest could
not grow you see the Amazon formed
during the Eocene epoch up to 56 million
years ago when the whole world was a lot
warmer and wetter under these conditions
rainforests could be found across the
planet but as the planet began to cool
these rainforests receded until only a
few surviving rainforests were left at
the tropics these remained intact only
because they were able to artificially
create climate conditions similar to the
times when they formed taking away these
force essentially ends these conditions
for good in its place would be a swath
of scarred land that's not good for any
commercial use besides the rain the
forest also helps maintain the health
and fertility of the soil and without it
the field would quickly wither and erode
because of this it would it be useful
for large-scaled long-term agriculture
without heavy use of fertilizers for
this reason the land would eventually be
left alone for nature to take its course
in this event plants would slowly
reclaimed the land but in the place of
the once a mighty Amazon rainforest
would likely be an extensive grassland
region interspersed with occasional
Woodlands similar to the climate of
eastern central Africa like the
Serengeti as these regions both exist at
the same latitude a similarly
functioning ecosystem would begin to
form likely with large herds of grazing
animals these could possibly even be the
ancestors of escaped farm animals from
Brazil's huge livestock industry but it
would never come close to the grandeur
of the rainforest that preceded it if
there's one takeaway from this video it
should be this when it comes to clearing
any part of the Amazon the immediate
benefits can never outweigh the
long-term costs and doing so has
far-reaching consequences on not only
the region but the world and once it's
done it can't be undone I guess there
are a couple things I'd like you to take
away from this video actually anyway if
you're interested in helping to conserve
what remains of the Amazon and of all
the world's rainforests for that matter
there's a number of great charities and
organizations out there working with
that cause
in mind other than that I hope you
enjoyed if you did and you want to see
more give this video a like and
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I post new ones if you're curious about
other hypothetical ways to destroy the
earth you should check out this video
about what would happen if Antarctica
melted other than that thanks for
watching
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