Effects of drought on rainforest

Abstract

An experiment to simulate the effects of climate change and severe drought on a parcel of rainforest in the Brazilian Amazon has found that some parts of the affected forest tolerated the dry condition by absorbing water from deeper in the soil.When the water in the soil had been depleted, many small trees stopped growing, rather than shedding their leaves. This finding has implications for climate change because the amount of carbon removed from the atmosphere during tropical droughts will decrease significantly, according to researchers.