A DATA DRIVEN APPROACH TO STUDYING THE AMAZON RAINFOREST OF BRAZIL

Ever since the 1970s, there has been a major increase of deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest. This is partly due to economic booms in cattle ranching and other agriculture in Brazil. As one of the largest countries in South America, Brazil makes up about 60% of the Amazon Rainforest. While deforestation rates in the Amazon Rainforest peaked in the 1990s, there has been a recent spike due to illegal deforestation, and agendas within the Brazilian Government. Not only is this destruction harmful to the forest itself, but it also has a direct effect on the survival of wildlife and Indigenous inhabitants throughout the entire Amazon Rainforest. Deforestation poses a threat to the rest of the world, as tree loss and controlled burning has caused CO2 emissions in the Amazon Rainforest to skyrocket. The Amazon Rainforest has always been a carbon sink, but as more trees have been cut down, several parts of the Amazon have started to emit more carbon than it absorbs. The goal of this presentation is to accurately portray the current wellbeing of the Amazon Rainforest, and to study the widespread consequences of deforestation through an analysis of data ranging from the 1970s to today. This data measures several factors, such as increasing deforestation rates, increases in farmland, carbon emission/sequestration rates, habitat fragmentation, controlled burning rates, forest degradation, etc. After analyzing this data, the objective of this presentation is to show how these changes have impacted our world economically, socially, and environmentally and to predict how it will shape the future. This research will explore 3 predictions. Hypothesis 1: if all deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest were to stop immediately, then climate change will be partly affected, but most of the destruction in the Amazon can be reversed over time. Hypothesis 2: if all deforestation in the Amazon were to stop gradually over 20 years, then climate change will be noticeably affected and there will likely be permanent damage to highly deforested areas of the rainforest. Hypothesis 3: if deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest is never stopped, then the negative consequences will significantly contribute to climate change, and the entire Amazon Rainforest could change from a tropical rainforest to a dry savannah.