Amazon rainforest major threat to the Amazon rainforest. The highway still has not been completed, limiting the environmental damage. Between 1991 and 2000, the total area of forest lost in the Amazon rose from , with most of the lost forest becoming pasture for cattle. Seventy percent of formerly forested land in the Amazon, and 91% of land deforested since 1970, is used for livestock pasture. Currently, Brazil is the second-largest global producer of soybeans after the United States. New research however, conducted by Leydimere Oliveira et al., has shown that the more rainforest is logged in the Amazon, the less precipitation
Amazon rainforest of deforestation on regional climate, are pushing the rainforest towards a "tipping point" where it would irreversibly start to die. It concluded that the forest is on the brink of being turned into savanna or desert, with catastrophic consequences for the world's climate. According to the World Wide Fund for Nature, the combination of climate change and deforestation increases the drying effect of dead trees that fuels forest fires. In 2010, the Amazon rainforest experienced another severe drought, in some ways more extreme than the 2005 drought. The affected region was approximate of rainforest, compared to in 2005. The 2010