Land use types in the Amazon basin, their connection to precipitation and the implications of land use change

in the basin system

Written by James Harper

Abstract This report looks at the rates of precipitation above different land use types in the Amazon basin and shows that there is a significant relationship between the two variables. It is a small part of the whole basin system but a very significant part none the less. Looking at pasture data sets and data from the Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission (TRMM) over the past 12 years from 1998 2009. Using each yearly average from different locations across the basin and statistical tests to deem the significance of the rates of precipitation. There is a definite link between land use type and the rates of precipitation, the possible implications these results have on the overall complex basin system have been looked at and the impacts may be more far reaching that just the basin, possibly the whole global circulation system. Keywords Amazon basin, Precipitation, Global circulation system, Land use change, Hydrological cycle

Contents Page 4 Page 6 Page 9 Page 9 Page 11 Page 14 Page 21 Page 24 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 31 Page 35 Section 1 Introduction Section 2 Method Section 3 Results 3.1 Pasture data set 3.2 12 year averaged data 3.3 Yearly averages of precipitation 3.4 Statistical Analysis Section 4 Discussion Section 5 Conclusion Section 6 Acknowledgements Section 7 References Section 8 Appendix 1 Project Proposal Section 9 Appendix 2 Progress Report

Introduction (Section 1) The Amazon basin is roughly located at latitude 5N 15S and longitude 75W 45W on the South American continent. It contains the second largest river in the world with the largest discharge of any river at over 200,000m-3 s-1 of water, due to a drainage basin of approximately 7,000,000km-2. It is the largest rainforest on our planet and one of the worlds major carbon dioxide (CO2) reservoirs; this is not just looked at in terms of absorption by the trees but from all the biomass and soil in the basin. It contains many valuable resources and has a large influence on the global climate and is a dominant factor of the South American climate. In this project I shall be looking at one aspect of the complex system that is the Amazon basin. I want to concentrate on a small part of the whole, specifically the impact of the different types of land use that occur within the Amazon basin. I want to see if there is a link between the rates of precipitation over the different uses of land in the basin. My hypothesis is this; there is a significant difference between the types of land use, and precipitation rates above that land. I decided to look at this aspect of the basin system because I will be able to justify my results through quantitative and qualitative methods from the datasets that are available to me. There have been many published articles on the Amazon Rainforest and the climates relationship to it, and the link between the drier seasons and the increase in likelihood of forest fires (Arago et al, 2008). Also, how the different atmospheric phenomenon such as the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Atlantic Ocean Sea Surface Temperatures (SST) influence precipitation and the climate across the Amazon basin (Nobre, 2009). There are predictions about how the whole system may react to the changing global climate through adaptation, for example by means of deep roots (Markewitz et al. 2010), or having more negative effects on precipitation rates and the hydrological cycle where extreme events may occur for longer periods of time (Hiscock and Tanaka, 2006). There are also ideas on the further deforestation of forest having an impact itself on the global climate (Bala et al, 2007). The gap in the market that I am looking at specifically is land use linking to precipitation. I want to place this work in the larger picture as a small part of the whole system, draw
4

conclusions, and discuss the consequences of the whole system changing. Land use change has been linked to forest fires (Cochrane and Laurance, 2008), deforestation and loss of bio diversity, but I believe has not been linked specifically to rates of precipitation with the data set for land use that I have used in this report (Ramankutty et al, 2008). Also, the availability of new data sets for land use and the ever increasing volume of data gathered from the Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission (TRMM), I have been able to look at longer timescales for precipitation than was previously available. The main reasons I am looking at precipitation and land use is because I am interested in how potentially such a small part of the whole system can have such large implications and feedback, into not just the regional system of the Amazon basin but potentially the whole global atmospheric system.

Method (Section 2) I first started by looking at where the precipitation data would come from. The best source for this precipitation data in the tropics is from the TRMM satellite launched in 1997. Its purpose is to observe and record precipitation rates and energy exchange in the tropics (Kummerow et al. 1998). I will be using the data collected from the TRMM Precipitation Radar (TPR) and the TRMM Microwave Imager (TMI) from on board the satellite; these are combined into in large tables of data. The data is in 3 hourly averaged 0.25x.025 grid boxes, ~25km, from 50N to 50S in a band across the whole planet, therefore the Amazon basin is well within the satellites coverage and a reliable data set to use for my research. The data is displayed in mm hr-1 and is taken over the whole year, so the numbers may seem small but that is because they are averaged over a total of 8760 hours. I also needed to have a data set that would help me look at land use across the Amazon basin, so I will be using a land use dataset focusing on pastures, having a resolution of 0.1x0.1, ~10km (Ramankutty et al. 2008). The data is from the year 2000 so it coincides well with my precipitation data that runs from 1998 2009. As it is almost from the start of the precipitation dataset then I will be able to look at the impacts, for nearly a decade after the data was created and hopefully be able to see what impacts if any have occurred as a result. They are both very high resolution sets of data which will help me to see if there are any small scale changes in the region. Both data sets needed to be manipulated into manageable formats for me to be able to use them effectively. I was helped and taught to use Unix and Python script of which I had no previous experience. The data was in netcdf form, being a standard format for climate based data sets, and so could be utilised in the special linked computers, called the escluster, we have at the University of East Anglia. The cluster consists of ~100 computers linked together generating sufficient computing power able to process and work with the large datasets I am using. The site is escluster.uea.ac.uk. Within the cluster I was using a program called Climate Data Analysis Tools (CDAT) - this program can easily read the netcdf file format that my data uses. I also used a basic text writing program called Emacs, this let me type in a script to look at the specific data I wanted to look at,

it let me easily write what I needed and was able to be run as part of a longer script to let me see my data in visual form. Once my TRMM data had been sorted through for errors in the data and correctly sorted for use in CDAT, I began to break it down into manageable sets, using Emacs, so I would be able to look and compare the data. I decided to separate the data into yearly time intervals, as I deemed it sensible to have an average for the whole year to start with, this would average out any anomalies and help to highlight any annual patterns. My data ranged from 1998 2009, so I have 12 years of data and trends to look at. I also averaged the data over a 12 year period to see what a complete average of the data would look like. After I had decided how to break the data down, I wrote out the time scales, each being a year long, on Emacs and then ran it through scripts that I had had help with creating (Section 6). Once the scripts had been run I had many individual data sets for each year, and the multiple yearly averages that I wanted to use. If I needed other averages or individual months I could still come back and write more into Emacs and run the scripts I had again to produce what I needed. The pasture data set was not as complex to work through as it was only from the year 2000. I was not as confident using pure scripting code in CDAT so I using the Visual Climate Data Analysis Tools (VCDAT) which was more interactive and easier for me to use, it had buttons and sliders instead of having to write out the lines of code. I was able to zoom in on the Amazon basin, by selecting specific latitude and longitude co-ordinates using the sliders on VCDAT, and look at the areas in which there were the greatest concentrations of pasture. I deemed that anything below 30% density of pasture was not of a significant impact on the landscape to majorly alter the atmospheric system above. So I could look more closely at areas of higher concentration that stood out and compare this to the TRMM data set to see if there were areas of decreased precipitation that linked into areas of significant pasture outcrops in the basin that I had found. I marked down those areas of the highest concentrations of pasture. I began to look at areas of significantly high or low precipitation on the averages I had and mark down those areas latitude and longitude as well. I created a new data set containing the wettest season in the Amazon basin. This was December, January and February (DJF). As the wet season overlaps into the next year I only had 11 data points for each grid box to compare. I did

this as I wanted to see what the rates of precipitation would be at the forests wettest point and what impact this had in the areas of significant pasture. Taking the rough latitude and longitudes I had, I made 1x1 squares from these areas of pasture, I have taken the average precipitation for each year from 1998 2009 in the grid box that I looked at. I have then taken another 1x1 square of complete rainforest at a sensible distance from the pasture box, and taken the precipitation average as with the first box. After collecting the data from different areas across the basin, I wanted to see if the pairs of data were significantly independent from each other and not just random coincidence. I wanted to show that the precipitation falling in these areas was significantly different, and helped to prove my hypothesis about precipitation being linked to land use (Section 1). I used a Students T Test to test if the groups of data were significantly independent from each other above a 99% significance level.

Results (Section 3) 3.1- Pasture dataset By looking at the data, I have been able to see some very interesting results relating to the land use and precipitation in the Amazon basin and also some results I did not expect. The data below is all that I deemed useful to my report as it shows the pasture data, wet season (DJF) data I was using and the statistical analysis I conducted.
Land use data over the Amazon

Pasture Density (%) Figure 1 Pasture data from the year 2000 across the Amazon basin at < 30% density per 0.1 x 0.1 pixel

The pasture data (Figure 1) shows the spread of deforested areas that contain exposed pasture used for grazing. The colour indicates the level of density of pasture in that area, red meaning the highest concentrations at 100% coverage and blue meaning 30% coverage and white is the a density lower than 30% per pixel. There are significant concentrations of pastures on the exterior of the Amazon basin, but a lower concentration on the interior of the rainforest. The reason for this is because there are fewer areas of concentrated population. The inhabitants will mostly only live on the edge of the Amazon River, so any areas that have been deforested for pasture will be
9

smaller than those more accessible areas on the edges of the forest. It is easier for people to fell trees and use slash and burn techniques on the fringes of the forest and work inwards, this is easier than trying to log from the interior of the forest and trying to transport the wood cut down along the river where there is lower accessibility for a large scale operation.

10

3.2 12 year averaged data

1998 2009 averaged precipitation

Precipitation (mm hr-1) Figure 2 12 year average (1998 2009) of precipitation (mm hr-1) over the whole Amazon basin

The precipitation data averaged over the 12 years (Figure 2) shows some results I was not expecting to find, primarily that there are two main areas of more concentrated precipitation in the Amazon basin. One is in the West and I know that this is topographically related to the Andes mountain range. The increasing height above sea level leading up to the mountain range forces the moisture to ascend but this causes the clouds to form and cool and hold less moisture leading to forced precipitation in the mountains. This is the reason for the higher levels of precipitation occurring on the western side of the Amazon basin. The rates of precipitation are also influenced in some part by ENSO during its different phases. In the area to the East of basin there is a dense concentration of pasture in the approximate area 2S by 49W (Figure 1) that correlates to an anomalously higher area of precipitation in the
11

similar location (Figure 2), however this may not be the only cause. As this is a coastal area there would be the influence of warmer moist air coming off the South Atlantic Ocean due to varying warmer SST. The ocean acts as a thermal reservoir and there may be increased moisture available compared to that available on average further inland. Also this area has a high density of population so the urbanized areas contribute to the modification of the local environment.

Amazon River highlighted through precipitation

Precipitation (mm hr-1) Figure 3 12 year average (1998 - 2009) precipitation (mm hr-1) with the Amazon river and its main arteries highlighted

The final interesting piece of information that I found was that purely from averaged precipitation data the main arteries of the Amazon River itself can clearly be seen. This can be shown as I have highlighted its outline (Figure 3). I did not expect to see the river as an area of lower precipitation; I would have expected to see an area of increased precipitation as it is above a large source of moisture, and would have caused increased rates provided by convective precipitation in the afternoons in the Amazon. However, I can infer that it is the trees themselves that provide a greater source from evapotranspiration than the moisture provided the river. Hence it clearly being defined (Figure 2), approximately 34% of the precipitation in the basin is directly
12

from recycled water from within the basin (Trenberth, 1999). As there is greater volume of trees compared to area of river, the lower rate of precipitation of the river compared to that of the trees makes it clearly defined on my graph (Figure 3) when the precipitation rates are averaged over the 12 years of data I have.

13

3.3 Yearly averages of precipitation I have looked at each year of precipitation (Figure 4 15) to see if there are any significant patterns in the precipitation across the basin. Looking at the yearly averaged data I can compare this to global meteorological events that have occurred but I do not want to speculate in this section, as I am leaving that for my discussion (Section 4). From the graphs below (Figure 4 15) it can be seen that over the year the highest volume of precipitation is consistently within the same two areas in the basin. On the Western side of the basin at the base of the Andes and on the East coast, I have discussed these initial results already (Section 3.2) but it is interesting to note that even in the years of severe drought (Figure 11) and regardless of any other atmospheric influences they remain areas of higher intensity precipitation, also in the North an area of consistently lower precipitation.

Rainfall in the Amazon basin in 1998

Precipitation (mm hr-1) Figure 4 Average precipitation (mm hr-1) in 1998 over the Amazon basin

14

Rainfall in the Amazon basin in 1999

Precipitation (mm hr-1) Figure 5 Average precipitation (mm hr-1) in 1999 over the Amazon basin

Rainfall in the Amazon basin in 2000

Precipitation (mm hr-1) Figure 6 Average precipitation (mm hr-1) in 2000 over the Amazon basin

15

Rainfall in the Amazon basin in 2001

Precipitation (mm hr-1) Figure 7 Average Precipitation (mm hr ) in 2001 over the Amazon basin
-1

Rainfall in the Amazon basin in 2002

Precipitation (mm hr-1) Figure 8 Average precipitation (mm hr-1) in 2002 over the Amazon basin

16

Rainfall in the Amazon basin in 2003

Precipitation (mm hr-1) Figure 9 Average precipitation (mm hr-1) in 2003 over the Amazon basin

Rainfall in the Amazon basin in 2004

Precipitation (mm hr-1) Figure 10 Average precipitation (mm hr-1) in 2004 over the Amazon basin

17

Rainfall in the Amazon basin in 2005

Precipitation (mm hr-1) Figure 11 Average precipitation (mm hr-1) in 2005 over the Amazon basin

Rainfall in the Amazon basin in 2006

Precipitation (mm hr-1) Figure 12 Average precipitation (mm hr-1) in 2006 over the Amazon basin

18

Rainfall in the Amazon basin in 2007

Precipitation (mm hr-1) Figure 13 Average precipitation (mm hr-1) in 2007 over the Amazon basin

Rainfall in the Amazon basin in 2008

Precipitation (mm hr-1) Figure 14 Average precipitation (mm hr-1) in 2008 over the Amazon basin

19

Rainfall in the Amazon basin in 2009

Precipitation (mm hr-1) Figure 15 Average precipitation (mm hr-1) in 2009 over the Amazon basin

20

3.4 Statistical Analysis

Table 1 Statistical analysis of precipitation rates (mm hr-1) of different land use types in the Amazon basin over the wet season (DJF) from each year of the dataset at each given latitude and longitude

Latitude/Longitude Year 98/99 99/00 00/01 01/02 02/03 03/04 04/05 05/06 06/07 07/08 08/09 Average Std Deviation T Test
Table 1a.

3.625N 2.625N / 61.875W 60.875W Pasture 0.1837 0.1446 0.0413 0.0378 0.0283 0.0306 0.1114 0.1536 0.0141 0.0787 0.2309 0.0959 0.074 0.000

1.625S 2.625S / 61.875W 60.875W Rainforest 0.4217 0.3431 0.3094 0.3662 0.2831 0.2222 0.3371 0.4022 0.2098 0.4303 0.4745 0.3454 0.085

Latitude/Longitude Year 98/99 99/00 00/01 01/02 02/03 03/04 04/05 05/06 06/07 07/08 08/09 Average Std Deviation T Test
Table 1b.

0.375S 1.375S / 49.625W 48.625W Pasture 0.4392 0.5697 0.5391 0.3840 0.3765 0.5446 0.3736 0.4738 0.3747 0.5520 0.5685 0.4723 0.085 0.071

0.125S 1.125S / 50.375W 49.375W Rainforest 0.4616 0.5223 0.5626 0.3815 0.3931 0.5263 0.4260 0.5317 0.3895 0.5978 0.6315 0.4931 0.088

21

Latitude/Longitude Year 98/99 99/00 00/01 01/02 02/03 03/04 04/05 05/06 06/07 07/08 08/09 Average Std Deviation T Test
Table 1c.

10.125S 11.125S / 63.125W 62.125W Pasture 0.3987 0.3164 0.4074 0.4118 0.3966 0.3905 0.3478 0.4613 0.3516 0.3739 0.3874 0.3858 0.038 0.000

7.125S 8.125S / 63.125W 62.125W Rainforest 0.4926 0.3938 0.5923 0.5919 0.4598 0.4095 0.3794 0.5466 0.3726 0.4016 0.4732 0.4648 0.082

Latitude/Longitude Year 98/99 99/00 00/01 01/02 02/03 03/04 04/05 05/06 06/07 07/08 08/09 Average Std Deviation T Test
Table 1d.

1.125S 2.125S / 53.875W 52.875W Pasture 0.2293 0.4112 0.2606 0.2107 0.2204 0.2827 0.2587 0.3296 0.1512 0.2486 0.3537 0.2688 0.073 0.000

1.125S 2.125S / 51.875W 50.875W Rainforest 0.3354 0.3705 0.3873 0.3388 0.3008 0.3674 0.4612 0.4930 0.2858 0.3893 0.4909 0.3837 0.071

22

Latitude/Longitude Year 98/99 99/00 00/01 01/02 02/03 03/04 04/05 05/06 06/07 07/08 08/09 Average Std Deviation T Test
Table 1e.

5.875S 6.875S / 48.125W 47.125W Pasture 0.2327 0.4118 0.3638 0.3847 0.3825 0.4650 0.3008 0.3234 0.3475 0.2517 0.2787 0.3402 0.071 0.000

1.875S 2.875S / 48.125W 47.125W Rainforest 0.4317 0.5012 0.5242 0.3619 0.4606 0.5026 0.3651 0.4863 0.4006 0.5236 0.4704 0.4571 0.059

The pairs of data are made up of one complete area of pasture and one complete area of rainforest. Four out of my five pairs of data (Table 1a, c, d, e), shown in blue are the results that passed at a 99% significance level, to 3 decimal places. This proves that these locations are independent and the data sets are from different locations. My statistical analysis (Table 1a-e) has helped to show that there is a significant difference in the rates of precipitation, and proves that my initial hypothesis (Section 1) that land use type affects the rate of precipitation above that land use. It is the quantitative result I wanted to see and to show that there is a difference between the types of land use and from this to discuss the implications of my findings. There was one data pair that was not significant at either the 99% or 95% significance level (Table 1b), which was the exception to the rest of my data. This pair was taken in the East of the basin in an area of anomalously high average precipitation (Figure 2), which I have discussed previously in my report. With further time and more detailed datasets on more land use types I believe I would find results of a similar nature.

23

Discussion (Section 4) From my results (Section 3) I have shown that there is a statistically significant difference between the rates of precipitation above the different types of land use in the Amazon basin. I have also found that the Amazon River itself is a land use type that influences the rates of precipitation (Figure 2 3). The averaged data from each year (Figure 4 15) can be seen to have been influenced from factors external to the basin. Although, it is hard to discern any real seasonal pattern of rainfall from my graphs due to these external factors that vary from year to year. It can still be seen throughout each graph that there are areas of consistently higher and lower precipitation (Section 3.3). In 2001 (Figure 7) there is a higher precipitation rate further into the Amazon basin than in the rest of my yearly averages. I believe this is due to a stronger ENSO and a warmer set of SST in the South Atlantic which have both been seen to influence the rates of precipitation in the basin (Liebmann, 2001). Also, during 2005 (Figure 11) there was a major drought that plagued the Amazon basin (Zeng, et al. 2008). It was very close to pushing the Amazon Rainforest past a tipping point, where it would not have been able to fully recover from the damage caused. The reason that this was of such concern was because, the longer the drought continued the lower the water table in the soil became, this forced deep roots to seek out water further into the soil (Markewitz et al, 2010). If the drought had continued any further without any significant period of precipitation the trees would not have had enough water to survive till the next rainy season, even with the adaptations of deep roots that draw water from deep sources (Zeng et al, 2009) throughout the dry season. So with an increase in the change in land use across the basin, which we know has an influence on the rates of precipitation (Table 1) Also from other papers, that show different land use types have different varying on the atmosphere such as Pielke et al (2007). I can infer that there may be more exposed soil, less land containing large tropical trees, which are able to contain significant volumes of water, and more areas of pasture. Thus overall a decreased rate of moisture entering the basin system through evapotranspiration in the long term would begin to cause wide spread problems throughout the system. It has been discussed by Malhi et al. (2009) that in the short term the Amazon may adapt its overall system due to a change in land use and increased temperatures, but it would most likely

24

push the Amazon towards a seasonal forest instead of a rainforest. Even though land use change is a small part of the whole it can have a large impact on the overall system. The lower precipitation rates mean that there is more chance of prolonged large scale droughts throughout the basin. If there were longer periods of drought there would be a higher chance of forest fires occurring (Arago et al, 2008) due to the drying out of vegetation. The outside forcing of a potential increase in global temperature, may also be another major factor that may influence the length of the wet and dry seasons in the Amazon basin. With the chance of increased areas of pasture it is much easier for this land use and similar types to dry out compared to tropical forest, so more fires may occur and spread across the basin, making the rest of the basin vulnerable to a much greater extent of damage. Also from the increased amount of fires occurring more burnt carbon would be put into the atmosphere, leading to a higher proportion of cloud condensational nuclei (CCN). In the short term this may be advantageous meaning there are more particles for rain droplets to form around, but as the proportion increased then the spread of water droplets would become thinned out across the area instead of more concentrated rainfall, and with less moisture entering the system this would only help to further weaken the intensity of precipitation. If this occurred or if there was less precipitation due to the changing land use in the basin then the forest could be pushed past a tipping point (Nepstad et al, 2008) where it would be almost impossible to restore the forest to its original state. After the tipping point the forest will either readjust or collapse to become a seasonal forest rather than a rainforest as mentioned above in the paper by Mahli et al, (2009). If this were to occur it would mean a massive loss in bio diversity in the basin. The forest would rapidly die back to a much smaller size than it currently is and this has more implications. It would be a loss of a large CO2 sink and storage area (Botta et al, 2002), although the scale of the sink is a subject of discussion, as with all of the major carbon sinks and the volumes of CO2 they are able to hold. But regardless of its scale the fact that we may lose large parts of the forest does not just mean a loss of carbon sink it means more CO2 would be released from the soil and biomass decay into the atmosphere. The volume of carbon released may alter the atmospheric chemistry or increase pressure on other carbon sinks, like the worlds oceans, which are undergoing acidification from carbonic acid, which is causing a bleaching of coral reefs due to the oceans trying to process the increased intake of CO2 from the atmospheric part of the system (Erez et al.2011).

25

With an increasing demand for renewable energies and cheaper sources of fuel I believe that there is a danger posed by rapid land use change, for bio-fuels created from crops. As the demand for them increases, more pressure will be put on creating space for these crops and for more food. So the change in land use may occur more rapidly due to industrial pressure as they want to press ahead and take advantage of a potentially lucrative opportunity, however this will lead to the vulnerable systems such as the vast Amazon Rainforests, that will be exploited to the point where in 50 years we may not have an Amazon Rainforest to protect. The ramifications of the loss of the Amazon Rainforest through change in land use or forcing from other factors are unknown, as we do not know what kinds of impact the loss of the forest will have on the global atmospheric system. Also these are only some of my basic potential ideas of branches of scenarios that have the potential for occurring, but it has been well documented by recent journal articles such as the ones I have used in this discussion that there is a cause for concern about the impact of a change in the volume of areas in the Amazon basin that are undergoing land use change from humans.

26

Conclusion (Section 5) Through the statistical analysis of the data that I have used (Section 3) to look at the relationship between the type of land use and the precipitation rates above it, I have seen that there is a statistically significant difference between the rates of precipitation in different areas across the basin. Even though this is a small part of the Amazon basin system, from looking at the whole system I can theorise that this small part has the potential to have large implications on the basin system as I have discussed previously (Section 4). We cannot know the future implications as trying to model all of the response of the basin system linking to the Global system is nearly impossible to do. We have few long term averages or predictions for different parts of the Amazon basin system, like the total impact of long term droughts or increases in local temperature rise or the impact of more CCN being present in the atmosphere above the Amazon due to increasing intensity of forest fires. We can only look to limit the potential anthropogenic changes of land use in the basin, by trying to reduce the level of non-renewable logging and illegal felling of trees in the basin and the clearing of large areas for use as pasture or cropland for more food. As other climate forcing are out of our hands, we may already be at a point where another long term drought in the Amazon basin may cause irreparable damage to the forest, biodiversity and overall climate system. As this is yet to happen we may be able to limit these manmade impacts. The most important piece of information I have gained from doing this report is that the Amazon basin is a dynamic system and even the smallest change, like a percentage increase in the area of anthropogenically changed land use in the system, can have large knock on effect to the whole system and potentially the whole global climate system.

27

Acknowledgements (Section 6) I would like to thank Dr Adrian Matthews for all his help with the processing of the large volumes of data I had to go through and helping to teach me the basics of python scripting, also for helping to steer all my ideas into a cohesive project.

28

References (Section 7) Arago, L.E.O.C., Mahli, Y., Barbier, N., Lima, A., Shimabukuro, Y., Anderson, L., Saatchi, S., 2008, Interactions between rainfall, deforestation and fires during recent years in the Brazilian Amazonia, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society Biological Sciences, 363, 1779 1785. Balla, G., Caldeira, K., Wickett, M., Phillips, T.J., Lobell, D.B., Delire, C., Mirin, A., 2007 Combined climate and carbon-cycle effects of large-scale deforestation, PNAS, 104, No 16, 6550 6555. Botta, A., Ramankutty, N., Foley, J.A., 2002, Long-term variations of climate and carbon fluxes over the Amazon basin, Geophysical Research Letters, 29, No 9, 10.1029/2001GL013607. Cochrane, M.A., Laurance, W.F., 2008, Synergisms among Fire, Land Use, and Climate Change in the Amazon, Ambio: A Journal of the Human Environment, 37, No 7 8, 522 527. Erez, J., Reynaud, S., Silverman, J., Schneider, K., Allemand, D., 2011, Coral Calcification Under Ocean Acidification and Global Change, Coral Reefs: An Ecosystem in Transition, Part 3, 151-176,DOI: 10.1007/978-94-007-0114-4_10. Hiscock, K., Tanaka, Y., 2006, Potential impacts of Climate Change on Groundwater Rescources: From the High Plains of the U.S. to the Flatlands of the U.K, National Hydrolody Seminar 2006, 19 26.

Kummerow, C., Barnes, W., Kozu, T., Shiue, J., Simpson, J., 1998, The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Sensor Package, Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, 15, 809 817. Liebmann, B., 2001, Interannual variability of the rainy season and rainfall in the Brazilian Amazon basin, Journal of Climate, 14, 4308 4318. Malhi, Y., Arago, L.E.O.C., Galbraith, D., Huntingford, C., Fisher, R., Zelazowski, P., Sitch, S., McSweeney, C., Meir, P., 2009, Exploring the likelihood and mechanism of a climate-changeinduced dieback of the Amazon rainforest, PNAS, 106, No. 49, 20610 20615.
29

Markewitz, D., Devine, S., Davidson, E.A., Brando, P., Nepstad, D.C., 2010, Soil moisture depletion under simulated drought in the Amazon: impacts on deep root uptake, New Phytologist, 187, 592 607. Nepstad, D.C., Stickler, C.M., Soares-Filho, B., Merry, F., 2008, Interactions among Amazon land use, forest and climate: prospects for a near-term forest tipping point, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society Biological Sciences, 363, 1737-1746.

Nobre,P., Malagutti, M., Urbano, D.F., de Almeida, R.A.F., Giarolla, E., 2009, Amazon Deforestation and Climate Change in a Coupled Model Simulation, Journal of Climate, 22, 5686 5697.

Pielke, R.A., Adegoke, J., Beltrn-Przekurat, A., Hiemstra, C.A., Lin, J., Nair, U.S., Niyogi, D., Nobis, T.E., 2007, An overview of regional land-use and land-cover impacts on rainfall, Tellus, 59B, 587 601.

Ramankutty, N., T. Evan, A.T., Monfreda, C.,Foley, J.A., Farming the planet: 1. Geographic distribution of global agricultural lands in the year 2000, Global Biogeochemical Cycles, 22, GB1003.

Trenberth, K.E., 1999, Atmospheric moisture recycling: Role of advection and local evaporation, Journal of Climate, 12, 1368 1381.

Zeng, N., Yoon, J., Marengo, J.A., Subramaniam, A., Nobre, C.A., Mariotti, A., Neelin, J.D., 2008, Causes and impacts of the 2005 Amazon drought, Environmental Research Letters, 3, 014002.

http://www.geog.mcgill.ca/~nramankutty/Datasets/Datasets.html - pasture data set

http://trmm.gsfc.nasa.gov/data_dir/data.html - TRMM dataset

30

Appendix 1 (Section 8)

Project Proposal

Background and Rationale

The use of satellites in observing the environment has revolutionized science in the last few decades. They are used for a variety of measurements, the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) measures precipitation rates over 3 hourly periods (Huffman et al. 2007) across the planets tropical regions. Measuring changes in diurnal cycles, monthly averages and yearly patterns can help us to better predict areas of intense rainfall and track small scale changes across specific areas.

With advances in technology we are able to view and analyse parts of the environment that we have never been able to or even thought of before. Deforestation is starting to become a major factor influencing conditions in the rainforests of the world. The rates of precipitation across the world can vary to the extremes; typical values in the tropical rainforests are from 2000 2500mm per year. However, with the large scale removal of forested areas is this having an effect on the local climate (Nobre et al. 1991) and these rates may be changing. With the use of the near real time data from TRMM there is data readily available to analyse these cycles (Negri. 2002) however, it is still not clear how data gathered by TRMM can be used to look at diurnal cycles in the smallest spatial regions, so it is unknown if for example if the land use in an area can effect rates of precipitation. Looking to find a gap in the science it seems that the data gathered from TRMM has not been used when overlaid with the land use in specific areas, for example the Amazon rainforest, where large swathes of trees are being cut down and used for agriculture and seeing if rate of precipitation are affected by this.

Hypothesis

To explore whether changes in land use across the Amazon basin have an impact on precipitation rates across different temporal periods.
31

The Study System The reason that I will be using the Amazon basin is because over the past decades the area has undergone significant changes in land use. Deforestation has destroyed large swathes of land in the basin and much of this has been used for agriculture, other areas have just been left as empty areas of loose soil and tree stumps. This change in land use and with large areas still as original rainforest I will be able to compare the rates of precipitation, between these areas to see if there is any significant difference spatially over the whole basin and over time as areas of deforestation have increased over the decades has there been a more dramatic change in the rates of precipitation in those areas. The TRMM data has been gathered for a long time so I will be able to have accurate averaged measurements over the whole time period I will be looking at.

Design and Methodology

The test my hypothesis I will be using the data gathered from the TRMM satellites over the past years and averaging it over different temporal periods to see if there is a change in the average precipitation rates over the Amazon basin. I will be using analysing software such as CDAT to gather the data into a manageable format so I will be able to over lay the data with a map of the Amazon basins land use. I will be comparing the types of land use also to see if each type has a different impact on precipitation rates, where in theory untouched rainforest should see the highest amounts of rainfall and deforested areas the least.

Data Summaries and Analyses

I intend to display my data as a set of graphs with precipitation data, which will be coloured by intensity so it is easily readable, overlaid by the Amazon basin and its land use types. I will be showing numerous graphs that will display different temporal scales of averaged precipitation and also possibly the Amazon at different times to show if there has been significant changes in the land use across the basin.

32

Relevance

I will be helping to contribute to our understanding of the changes to micro scale and regional scale climate, and how the intensity of meteorological events change as the land use changes over time over an area of significant precipitation. I will be adding to our understand of the impact humans are having as we change the environment around us and what far reaching impacts that can have for the environmental norm as we disrupt the natural cycles that occur within the rainforests.

Planning Schedule

References

Huffman, G. J., Adler, R.F., Bolvin, D.T., Gu, G., Nelkin, E.J., Bowman, K.P., Hong, Y., Stocker, E.F., Wolff, D.B., 2007, The TRMM Multisatellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA): Quasi-Global, Multiyear, Combined-Sensor Precipitation Estimates at Fine Scales. Journal of Hydrometeorology, 8, 38-55

Negri, A.J., Bell, T.L., 2002, Sampling of the Diurnal Cycle of Precipitation Using TRMM. Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, 19, 1333-1344

33

Nobre, C.A., Sellers,P.J., Shukla, J., 1991, Amazonian Deforestation and Regional Climate Change, Journal of Climate, 4, 957-988

34

Appendix 2 (Section 9)

Progress report Work completed to date At this current stage I have gathered and collected the data necessary to have started looking to see if there was any link between the land use in the Amazon and precipitation rates across the basin. I have processed and manipulated this data into graphical form and have been started to prepare and make notes on how to write up my finding and researching the implications of a change in precipitation rates and its effect on the Amazon as a whole The methods used and further analyses to do With the data I had gathered and sourced from many places I began by using the UEA cluster to manipulate the data into manageable pieces that could be looked at and easily compare year by year. After this I have began to use some land use data and overlain it on the precipitation data to see if there are any changing trends. However because I have been using a different type of computer code to deal with the vast quantities of data I have been limited in the amounts of available land use data that I can find to overlay on the precipitation data. So I have been thinking about finding other sources of land use data and not overlaying it but comparing it side by side, I believe this is a viable way of comparing the data I have and being able to see if there are changes throughout the basin over different temporal periods. I have been using yearly averages so far but may try to use monthly averages for each year to see if the seasonal variations affect the overall averages. Results so far

35

Work remaining Over the coming weeks is shall be continuing to improve on the graphs looking at more specific areas within the Amazon and making them presentable and easy to understand Dissertation structure

Title Changes in land use across the Amazon basin and how precipitation rates vary across the basin temporally and spatially

Abstract A brief summary of my results and what the report is about

Keywords A few words that can be looked at to get an idea of what the project relates to

Introduction Outlining what my research is about, how and why I have investigated it and what relevance is has to the broader area of climate change and land use impacts Method

36

I will be detailing how I put the data into an easily understandable format, explaining how I edited and manipulated the data, and the processes used to get the data into the correct format

Results In this section I am going to be displaying all of my graphs from the average yearly rainfalls, overlays of the land use data that was available to me and the zoomed areas of the Amazon that do have significant changes in precipitation with regards the land use over time. I will attempt to explain my findings from the data I have gathered and try to get across the significance of them if there is any major revelation that I have found

Discussion I believe this is going to be my largest section in my report as I will be discussing the implications of my findings, if I do find significant evidence of decreasing precipitation with respect to change of land use then I can go into detail about the impacts. For example, the implications on the regional climatology, potentially global impacts to do with carbon sequestration and changing climate for the whole of the South American continent. Changes in rainfall patterns in the area with less precipitation and if these areas are now urbanised then the potential for more concentrated acid rain and its impact on the forest. Also with the decrease in rain fall the more potential for forest fires and talked about in other journal articles that I can cite. I believe there are other further areas I can discuss if I find other evidence and significance to the changing patterns of rainfall linked to land use

Conclusion I will be summarising all that I have found while carrying out this scientific report and what it may mean in the wider context of regional changes linked to changing land use over time and any other significant findings that I have made over the due course of the time spent doing this report

Acknowledgements I shall be thanking all those who have helped my with report and giving them fair credit where it is due

37

References This will be a comprehensive list of all the journals I have cited in my report and other sources of data such as these sites I have found my land use data

38