Land use change influences continental water cycle
Forests, and tropical forests in particular, play an important role in the global water cycle. Delft University of Technology PhD researcher Ruud van der Ent (TU Delft, The Netherlands) has recently shown that evaporation from the Amazon forest is for more than 50% responsible for the rainfall in Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and southern Brazil, where it feeds crops and rivers. Similarly in Africa, the Congo forest exports tons of water through the atmosphere to the West-African countries.
