Ohio Wesleyan University Professor Laurel Anderson, Ph.D., explains in a three-minute online lecture, “Rainforests, Cloud Fountains, and the Flying River of Brazil,” that “when you save the rainforest, you actually save the rain itself.”

She is available to discuss the topic in light of news, as reported in the Oct. 8 New York Times, that the Amazon River has fallen to its lowest level on record.

Anderson is a plant ecologist at Ohio Wesleyan, president of the Board of Directors for the Ecological Research as Education Network (EREN), and chair of the Network Management Team of the Macrosystems Ecology For All Network (MEFA). Her research and teaching interests include temperate forest ecology, invasive plants, global environmental change, and developing collaborative ecological projects across small colleges.

In her three-minute Ohio Wesleyan lecture, Anderson explains that “tropical rainforest trees recycle the rain back into the atmosphere to create the flying river of Brazil. …”

“So when I see a tree, I don’t just see leaves and branches,” she continues, “I see a cloud fountain that is spouting water into the air. In the Amazon region, the trees, all together, put about 20 billion tons of water back into the air each year and this falls as rain.”

But what if the rainforests are destroyed?

“What scientists worry about is if we don’t have trees, the water that’s coming off the Atlantic Ocean and falling onto the Amazon region will not return to the atmosphere,” Anderson says. “It will simply run off into the rivers. And that means the flying river will dry up.

“And that means for southern Brazil and southern South America, drought and loss of crop productivity,” she concludes. “So, the key is, when you save the rainforest, you actually save the rain itself.”

Learn more about Anderson at www.owu.edu/Anderson and watch (or link to) her rainforests lecture at www.owu.edu/RainforestsVideo.

Submitted by Ohio Wesleyan University.