In a drying Amazon, change looms
If predictions of increasing Amazonian drought come true, the vast rain forest will be replaced by trees adapted to seasonal dryness in some places, while in others the land will be taken over by a mix of trees and grasses that will make up a savannah. That was the message from South American botanist Guillermo Goldstein, a professor at the University of Buenos Aires and the Robert F. Kennedy Visiting Professor in Latin American Studies at Harvard. Goldstein, who has spent his career studying the plants and ecosystems of South and Central America, delivered the Robert F. Kennedy Lecture at the Center for Government and International Studies on March 22. The talk, called “From the Amazon to Patagonia: An Ecological Journey through Latin American Ecosystems Facing Human Intervention and Climate Change,” was sponsored by the Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. Goldstein’s remarks touched on a wide range of South American ecosystems,...