Amazon Forest to Field
Investigating post-deforestation soil carbon persistence under changing climate and land-use in the Amazon Basin
Every year, the Amazon frontier loses forest to farmland, but while the trees disappear from satellite images, a hidden transformation unfolds in the soil beneath.
The Amazon Forest to Field project investigates the mechanistic controls of soil organic carbon (SOC) persistence after deforestation, tracing how fire, clay mineralogy, land-use management, and climate determine whether centuries of stored carbon stays locked underground or returns to the atmosphere as CO₂. By combining continent-scale field sampling across the Arc of Deforestation with process-based modelling, we identify the pathways toward carbon-negative agriculture in the Brazilian Amazon.
Explore the project
4
Regional sites across Amazonia
(Acre, Amazonas, Pará, Mato Grosso)
10
Partner institutions
18
Researchers from five countries
3
Years of measurements
Across the Arc of Deforestation, the carbon beneath our feet is being rewritten.
Latest news
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PhD studentship: can low-cost sensors and models show which Amazon forests are most at risk of burning?
A PhD at the University of Exeter combining environmental sensing, microclimate modelling and machine learning to predict fine-scale…
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China Scholarship Council and University of Exeter PhD Scholarships 2027 entry
中国国家留学基金委和英国埃克塞特大学合作奖学金（博士生项目） Prof Ted Feldpausch is recruiting students for the China Scholarship Council and University of Exeter PhD Scholarships.…
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The Amazon’s hottest days are warming more than twice as fast as its average
A new study in Communications Earth & Environment, co-authored at Exeter, shows that Amazonia’s climate extremes are changing…
Project partners
Securing the future of tropical soil carbon
Header image credit: Ted Feldpausch