The Amazonía+ Program, funded by the European Union, has participated in the screening and round table presentation of the documentary “Echoes of the Rainforest” in Barcelona; in which specialists in paleoecology study pollen samples extracted from the Amazonian soil to reconstruct the values of temperature and rainfall in the past and understand, through this analysis, climate change.

In an interdisciplinary team, these paleoecologists and paleoecologists from the Geosciences Barcelona-CSIC research center, in alliance with Peruvian environmental researchers and indigenous communities of the Pacaya-Samiria National Park, show how the work of study, protection and conservation of Amazonian ecosystems is carried out.

But what is paleoecology?

Encarni Montoya, scientist at Geosciences CSIC explains very clearly in the documentary: “Paleoecology is a discipline in the field of ecology that considers a longer time scale to really analyze what were the species of the past that lived in what environmental conditions and how they have evolved. But not just species, but also landscapes and ecosystems: how they have evolved over time and what has driven those changes.”

Paleoecology involves unraveling the Amazon’s past to anticipate what its future will be.

What is the Amazon for the communities that inhabit it?

“To answer you how much the Amazon, nature and diversity are worth, I would have to ask you how much your life is worth; if your life has a price, then maybe the Amazon has a price, because it is nature that gives us life,” answers a woman inhabitant of the Peruvian Amazon.

Why is it urgent to protect the Amazon?

The documentary highlights the urgent need to preserve the biodiversity and cultural heritage of the Amazon before its ecological and cultural integrity is irreversibly lost. Dael Sassoon, author of the documentary, explains: “The Amazon is about to reach a point of no return, to understand how vegetation in the Amazon reacts to climate change and to measure the sensitivity of tropical forests to changes in rainfall and temperature”.

Encarni explains forcefully: “The Amazon and the Tropics in general are big unknowns, they are huge areas in terms of conservation because they harbor huge amounts of biodiversity. The tropics are a key environment that harbor life on Earth as we know it, [the tropics are] responsible for the climatic conditions we have in extra-tropical regions, but not only biodiversity, but also the physical functioning of the Earth, also depends on the health and richness of tropical ecosystems.”

Gabriel Hidalgo, biologist at the Peruvian Amazon Research Institute, emphasizes: “The Amazon has around 6,000 species of trees alone, it is a dynamic ecosystem in which the rest of the world is integrated, it is not isolated: studies have confirmed that dust comes from the Sahara and is deposited in the Amazon, that evapotranspiration from the Amazon moves to other continents… everything is integrated”.

“Predictions for the year 2050 are not very positive: up to 47% of the Amazon rainforest could be lost”, as Encarni points out in the documentary: ”This would be linked to a cascade effect and death of other ecosystems in South America […] so maintaining the forest cover of the Amazon is crucial and a priority for all […].

The value of scientific communication and dissemination:

The roundtable discussed the vital need for science to disseminate its findings and the value of science communication; as well as the very notion of knowledge “who owns it”, highlighting the value of intersectional and inter-scientific knowledge, as well as multidisciplinary. The conclusion is clear: the efforts of all actors are needed to protect the Amazon (communities, scientists and scientists, decision makers, international cooperation…).

Among the challenges we currently face as societies on environmental issues, we find precisely that one of them, if not the main one, is how to open the conversation about climate change to all citizens; perhaps in today’s world some knowledge about ecology needs to be taught in schools so that we can make informed decisions about our future as a global planet.

If you have half an hour and want to discover the enormous scientific potential of pollen, feel free to watch here:

The PALOMA Project (Palaeoenvironmental Investigation of Amazonian Lowland Sensitivity to Climatic Drivers Using Pollen-based Modelling Approaches) is a postdoctoral fellowship funded by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions and the European Commission (Horizon Programme). Its objective is to study how vegetation responds to climate change in the northwestern Amazon lowlands using pollen-based methods.

Written by Clara Ortega Díaz-Aguado, Amazonía+ Project Technician

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