[EB66]

The soil is not only a meter deep. In most places it's several meters deep and it's that deep despite constant heavy rains and erosion.

The soil does not need to be millions of meters deep in order for the forest to be both a net carbon sink and net positive oxygen producer -- it can slowly acrue over time.

And even if biological respiration processes in the forest began to equal carbon sequestration processes -- the forest would still be a massive carbon sink over its lifetime given the massive quantites of plant matter and soil present.

[nearbuy]

It's about a meter deep on average, but it's such a moot point to quibble over because it's too low by a factor of about 100,000. If it were 100 meters deep, we'd still have to answer the same question.

Yes, the rainforest has been a massive carbon sink over its 30+ million year lifetime - because of the carbon it sequestered while it was first growing and expanding.

Yes, it could be producing very, very tiny amounts amounts of oxygen each year so that the rise in soil level isn't noticeable. If the rainforest was still slowly sequestering carbon in soil at a rate of about 1 meter of soil depth per 30 million years, then you're talking about it sequestering about 0.00005% of the carbon it captures through photosynthesis. If you're calling the article "completely wrong" over that, I'm not sure what to say.

And it's not just the yearly rate of oxygen production that must be negligible. The total oxygen produced over the Amazon's lifetime is negligible. As the article points out, if you burned the entire Amazon rainforest, releasing all the sequestered carbon, it would only decrease atmospheric oxygen from about 20.95% to 20.93%.