Amazon’s Hidden World, Now Live: New Project Tracks Biodiversity in Real Time

Scientists are launching a project to monitor biodiversity across the Amazon rainforest as it happens, according to a report in Science. The project aims to track changes in plants and animals continuously, rather than through occasional surveys. This gives researchers a near real-time view of how life in the rainforest is responding to threats such as deforestation and climate change. The Amazon is the world’s largest tropical rainforest and holds an estimated one in ten known species. Until now, measuring its biodiversity has been slow and limited to specific places and times. Real-time tracking could help scientists and policymakers detect declines faster and act sooner. Details of the project appear in Science, Volume 394, Issue 6819.