Fig. 3: Schematic representation of land-surface and atmospheric processes responsible for the weakening of land-climate feedbacks, due to large-scale deforestation in the southern Amazon basin.

a Intact forest, or regions less disturbed by human activities. These locations feature high and complex canopies which sustains intensive land-atmosphere turbulent mixing and humid air. In these circumstances, regional and upwind evapotranspiration possess strong moisture recycling and feedback mechanisms to maintain regional precipitation. b Large-scale deforestation has occurred. In these circumstances, evapotranspiration substantially declines and thus reduces available moisture that feeds into precipitation. Additionally, the drying atmosphere increases its stability, which further reduces precipitation, lengthens the distance of moisture transport, and promotes moisture flow out of the southern basin (Fig. 5). “Output” represents the atmospheric moisture transported out of a specific region, which here is generally regarded as the Amazon basin. The width of the arrows denotes the relative magnitude of moisture amount in atmospheric transport or land-atmosphere flux exchange. The length of the horizontal part of the arrows represents the relative distance of atmospheric moisture transport. For each process, the corresponding red symbols ‘+’ and ‘−’ in brackets represent an increase or decrease, respectively, in response to deforestation (i.e. the effects in (b) compared to those in (a)).