“You’re engulfed in waves of steam and sweating buckets and there’s no cool water anywhere,” Kenneth Feeley, a professor at the University of Miami, tells Mongabay. He’s describing the Boiling River in Peru’s Amazon Rainforest. “If you look at the heat index, everything says immediate danger of heat stroke.” The Boiling River gets its name from thermally heated water bubbling up from underground, creating distinct temperature zones in the surrounding forest. Within less than a kilometer (just over half a mile), temperatures vary by up to 11° Celsius (19.8° Fahrenheit), providing scientists with a natural laboratory to study how rising temperatures may affect tropical trees. This natural hotspot has existed for thousands of years, offering a window into how forests might look in a warmer future. In a study published in Global Change Biology, researchers found that for each 1°C (1.8°F) increase in temperature, there were 11% fewer tree species in the area. These temperature effects on tree diversity are significant, the authors say, given that scientists predict the region could warm by 3-6°C (5.4-10.8°F) by 2100. The Boiling River immediately downstream of most hot water inputs. Here, the water can reach 95 ˚C. Photo courtesy of Riley Fortier. To study these effects, the research team, led by Riley Fortier, a graduate student at the University of Miami, established 70 circular study plots, each with a diameter of 6 meters (20 feet). In each plot, they measured and identified every woody plant with a trunk diameter of 2 centimeters (nearly…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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