TellUs: No Amazon Rainforest Without The Sahara Desert?

The Sahara Desert and the Amazon rainforest link

You’ve probably just read the title to this blog and thought, huh? What do these two completely different terrains, places and so forth have in common? Well actually more than you think. In fact the Amazon rainforest wouldn’t thrive like it does without the Sahara Desert. The Sahara Desert is an extremely vast, virtually uninterrupted landscape consisting of sand and scrub situated across the northern third of Africa. The Amazon rainforest is the dense, humid jungle covering the northeastern areas of South America. 

Given the abundance and luxuriant growth of vegetation in the rainforest its shocking to believe that the Amazon rainforest ecosystem is actually commonly referred to as being a nutrient ‘desert’. Think of the Amazon as a leaking bathtub: decomposing leaves and organic matter fall to the floor (nutrients are locked up inside of these) and the majority are washed away via rainfall, into rivers and streams. This means the forest lacks a lot of minerals and substance that it needs to thrive naturally on its own, as the majority is being washed away. However more nutrients are actually locked away within the Sahara Desert, compared to the Amazon rainforest. The reason for this is the desert still encapsulates nutrients, from when the sands were part of a lake bed in the distant past. 

Strong winds blow across the Sahara sands, creating huge clouds of dust. These then travel between the continents via convection currents, allowing the dust to reach very high altitudes - linking these two juxtapositional ecosystems. One particularly important nutrient blown across the ocean from the Sahara is phosphorus. Phosphorus is an essential nutrient for plant proteins and growth, this is vital for the Amazon forests to flourish. A particularly nutrient-rich part of the Sahara is the Bodélé Depression in Chad, an ancient river bed where rock minerals composed of dead microorganisms are loaded with phosphorus. A study done by NASA found that approximately 22,000 tonnes per year of phosphorus reaches the Amazon via the Sahara, about the same amount that is lost naturally from the Amazon through rainfall and flooding. 

NASA image of the dust clouds making their way from the Sahara to the Amazon

I hope this blog was informative and interesting! It’s amazing how the whole world is connected and how one element impacts on another, even if these elements are on the other side of the world.

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Check out my previous blog: https://www.tellusabouttheenvironment.com/2019/09/tellus-what-happens-mentally-when-we.html