Amazon's useful plants face steeper climate losses than their wild cousins
Cámara-Leret R, Roehrdanz PR, Bascompte J
Ethnobotany
One-third of all Amazon plant species feed, heal, or shelter the people who live among them, and those same species are disappearing from their ranges faster than plants no one depends on.
Researchers mapped out which Amazon plants Indigenous communities actually use and then modeled how climate change will affect those species over the next 50 years. The plants people rely on are losing ground faster than the ones people don't use, meaning communities could lose a quarter to a third of their useful local plants by 2080. On top of that, when Indigenous languages disappear, the detailed knowledge of how to find and use those plants goes with them.
Key Findings
Humans use 5,796 native Amazon plant species, roughly one-third of the known vascular seed plant flora in the basin.
Climate change will reduce the ranges of utilized plant species more than non-utilized species by 2060-2080, with Indigenous communities potentially losing 28-34% of their utilized plants locally.
Loss of threatened Indigenous languages could erase 26% of the Amazonian knowledge pool about plant use, independent of climate impacts.
chevron_right Technical Summary
A new study finds that climate change will shrink the habitats of Amazon plants used by Indigenous peoples faster than unused plants, threatening both traditional knowledge and the services those plants provide. The loss of Indigenous languages compounds the problem, potentially erasing 26% of the region's accumulated plant knowledge.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
The forest of knowledge under global change.
Amazonia harbours more than 10% of the terrestrial biodiversity of the Earth1 and more than 400 Indigenous groups2. So far, however, no study has assessed how climate change and the loss of Indigen...
open_in_new Read full abstractAbstract copyright held by the original publisher.
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