The Amazon basin contains the largest continuous area of tropical rainforests in the world, and has a crucial role in regulating Earth’s climate1. Rates of tropical-rainforest deforestation and the impacts of fire and drought there are well established2,3. Less is known, however, about how these factors might interact to affect biodiversity, and about the role that forest policy and its enforcement have had over time. Writing in Nature, Feng et al.4 address these issues.
Modelling conservation in the Amazon basin
Modelling conservation in the Amazon basin
Here we report that protected areas in the Amazon basin—the central feature of prevailing conservation approaches—are an important but insufficient component of this strategy, based on policysensitive simulations of future deforestation.