Are rare trees in Amazon rainforest on way to extinction?
Washington, Aug 14 (IANS) Common tree species will survive deforestation and road-building, but half of the rare trees in the Amazon could become extinct, Smithsonian scientists have warned. How resilient will natural systems be as they tide over decades of severe, human-induced global change? The debate is on between proponents of models that maximise and minimise extinction rates. The Amazon basin makes up 40 percent of the existing global rainforest. A fundamental characteristic of tropical forests is the presence of very rare tree species. Competing models of relative species yield different proportions of rare trees in the forest. Thirty years ago Stephen P. Hubbell, senior scientist of Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) and his colleague Robin Foster, now at the Field Museum in Chicago, set up a unique experiment to monitor the growth, birth and death of more than 250,000 tropical trees on Panama’s Barro Colorado Island. Today the STRI Centre for Tropical Forest Scien
