Every year, about 27.7 million tons of Saharan dust cross the Atlantic Ocean and settle on the Amazon rainforest, delivering phosphorus close to the amount the rainforest loses to runoff, meaning the world’s largest rainforest is partly fertilised by dust from the planet’s largest hot desert thousands of miles away

One of the planet’s driest landscapes might partly be the reason for the world’s largest rainforest’s remarkable productivity. According to NASA , each year, around 27.7 million tons of mineral-rich dust are carried by the wind from the Sahara Desert across the Atlantic Ocean before settling over the Amazon rainforest. According to a study published in Geophysical Research Letters led by Hongbin Yu, this airborne dust delivers approximately 22,000 tons of phosphorus annually, which is close to the amount of phosphorus the Amazon rainforest loses through rainfall and river runoff every year. According to SpaceDaily , this natural nutrient exchange has been occurring for thousands of years, thus playing a part in sustaining one of Earth’s most biodiverse forests despite its nutrient-poor soils.

Get breaking news anytime, anywhere. Download the TOI app now!