As climate change intensifies, deforestation from agriculture may leave crops with too little rainfall to thrive
7 May 2026

WASHINGTON — Climate change makes the southern Amazon’s rain increasingly sensitive to deforestation, a new study finds. Clearing large areas of forest can trigger severe and lasting reductions in rainfall regardless of climate, but as the Amazon warms and dries, that “tipping point” arrives at ever lower levels of deforestation.

This presents a conundrum for the expansion of Amazonian agriculture, which has cleared about a fifth of the region’s forests in the past 50 years but also depends on consistent rainfall. In the context of climate change, the authors write, deforestation limits once thought sufficient to maintain hydrological stability may no longer be enough. Warming is predicted to make the Amazon drier.

“The way I see this is like the snake eating its own tail,” said Eduardo Maeda, an Earth system scientist at the University of Helsinki and senior author on the study. “Our results demonstrate to producers in the south of the Amazon that their activities are impacting their profits and their future.”

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Currently, Maeda said, laws prohibit landowners in Amazon forest areas from deforesting more than 20% of their land. “That is not enough,” he said. “We need to do more.” In a worst-case warming scenario, his team estimates, maintaining current annual rainfall in areas larger than 210 square kilometers would require limiting deforestation to no more than 10% of that area.

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