NASA Shows How the Amazon Depends on the Sahara Desert

The Amazon and the Sahara desert seem to be opposed to each other when it comes to life: one "the lungs of our planet and the other the largest desert on Earth with inhospitable conditions for life. However, the Sahara desert is indispensable for the Amazon in order to fill its biosphere with oxygen and diversity. The arid desert maintains the Amazon humid.

Scientists from NASA have used the Calipso satellite to demonstrate the phenomenon which is the distribution of the sand from the Sahara desert traveling through the atmosphere towards the Amazon. Massive clouds of close to 182 tons of dust generated in the Bodele drop located northwest of the Chad Lake each year, an equivalent of 690 thousand trucks full of sand.
This mineral powder is made up of microorganisms that contain phosphorus, an important nutrient for the growth of the plants. It is estimated that close to 27 million tons of dust travels each year to the Amazon depositing close to 22 thousand tons of phosphorus to the forest. This process reestablishes minerals that maintains the cycle of life in the forest.
This is part of a complex self-regulatory process of the planet; when the rain in the region decreases the amount of dust that is distributed increases and vice versa. The interdependency of the ecosystem is shaped in a vital cycle because the tropical forest of the Amazon is the primary source of aerosol particles and affects in a decisive manner to the biogeochemical cycles, including carbon maintaining an atmosphere capable of sustaining life. The investigation also recalls the amount of factors that must be combined for life to emerge and remain on our planet.