What they found was remarkable.
Over a single winter, this targeted thinning increased snowpack by 30% on north-facing slopes and 16% on south-facing slopes.
That additional snow amounted to about 12.3 acre-feet of water—around 4 million gallons—per 100 acres on the cooler, north-facing slopes, and 5.1 acre-feet (about 1.5 million gallons) per 100 acres on the sunnier, south-facing slopes.
Not a surprise. It was my first thought as I read the headline.
During the record-breaking El Niño event, which brought the most severe drought ever recorded in the Amazon basin, the rainforest’s trees underwent a remarkable chemical adaptation to cope with extreme heat and water scarcity.
Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, using high-precision measurements from an 80-meter tower in the central Amazon, observed that emissions of sesquiterpenes surged by 122 percent throughout the drought period, while levels of the more common isoprene and monoterpenes remained largely unchanged.These sesquiterpenes function as stress signals and protective compounds, helping shield plant cells from oxidative damage caused by drought and high temperatures.Even more striking was the discovery in the subsequent wet season: the forest began releasing entirely new compounds never before detected in rainforest air—lower-volatility sesquiterpene alcohols such as beta-eudesmol, alpha-eudesmol, and gamma-eudesmol.These persisted for weeks after rains returned, indicating that the trees’ defense metabolism stayed activated long into the recovery phase.This shift toward more reactive, less volatile volatiles reflects profound metabolic changes as vegetation battles abiotic stress.
The findings highlight the Amazon’s resilience yet also its vulnerability, revealing how climate extremes may alter atmospheric chemistry with potential implications for air quality, cloud formation, and the broader carbon cycle in a warming world. Source
More negative news.