This is Scientific American 60 Second Science.

I'm Cynthia Graber.

Got a minute?

Some 12% of the forests of the Amazon have been lost in recorded history.

Another 9 to 28% will be gone by 2050. But we've not

known which species of trees are taking the biggest hits, in part because it's so difficult

to do the field work involved in species surveys.

Now, in a massive effort, a team of more than 158

researchers studied 1,200 plots of trees in the Amazon.

They estimated the effects of deforestation

on 5,000 species and modeled the impact of deforestation on some 10,000 more.

With the business's useful scenario, roughly half of the Amazon would be disforested in 2050,

leading to similar losses and main species

abonances.

Hans Tristiga of Utrecht University in the Netherlands,

one of the study participants.

The findings mean that 36 to 57% of Amazon trees

could qualify for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's

Red List of Threatened Species, including the commercially valuable Brazil nut and cacao.

Nigel Pittman of Chicago's Field Museum also worked on the study.

So if we were to put on the red list all of these

Amazonian trees that aren't currently listed

...