Effects of Climate Change on the Amazonian Ecosystem

Abstract

Despite large-scale infrastructure development, deforestation, mining and petroleum exploration in the Amazon Basin, relatively little attention has been paid to the management scale required for the protection of wetlands, fisheries and other aspects of aquatic ecosystems. This is due, in part, to the enormous size, multinational composition and interconnected nature of the Amazon River system, as well as to the absence of an adequate spatial model for integrating data across the entire Amazon Basin. In this data article we present a spatially uniform multi-scale GIS framework that was developed especially for the analysis, management and monitoring of various aspects of aquatic systems in the Amazon Basin.

Climate change is already happening and is already producing impacts, and the greater the warming, the greater the future impacts and risks that humanity will face, including the possibility of irreversible damage to ecosystems, biodiversity, agricultural production, and the economy and society in general. In the medium term, effectively integrating adaptation to climate change can help build a more resilient society. According to several sources of temperature data, the warming observed in the Amazon, from 1949 to 2018, ranges from 0.6 to 0.7º C. Although there are some systematic differences, all sources point to greater warming in the last couple of decades with 2017 being the hottest year since the mid-20th Century.