Trees of all sizes across the Amazon rainforest are getting fatter due to climate change, a new study shows.
Rising carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations in the atmosphere have created a more resource-rich environment for plants in the Amazon, leading to an average 3.3% increase in the circumference of trees at their base every decade since the 1970s, researchers have found.
“We knew that the total amount of carbon stored in the trees of intact Amazonian forests has increased,” study co-author Tim Baker, a professor of tropical ecology and conservation at the University of Leeds in the U.K., said in a statement. “What this new study shows is that all sizes of trees have grown larger over the same period — the whole forest has changed.”
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