Forests play an important role in maintaining rainfall patterns worldwide by recycling water back to the atmosphere through evapotranspiration. We present a novel spatiotemporal data-driven model and assessment of the impacts of various deforestation scenarios on rainfall patterns in sub-Saharan Africa, where rainfed agriculture is the main source of income and provides food for a large part of the population. Our model is based on the convolutional long short term memory neural network and uses a combination of climate and vegetation time-series data to predict rainfall and to perform simulation experiments. Our results show that complete deforestation (i.e. conversion of all humid forests to short grasslands) would greatly reduce rainfall magnitude in the deforested areas. Above the equator, the large majority of areas not currently forested would also receive less rainfall. However, complete deforestation would slightly increase rainfall in some parts of Southern Africa and decrease it in other parts. The impacts of partial deforestation also differ across Africa. In West Africa, even moderate tree cover loss (i.e. 30%) reduces rainfall magnitude whereas in Central and Southern Africa, a threshold of 70% tree cover loss is required to reduce rainfall magnitude. Deforestation of remaining humid rainforest areas is thus likely to dramatically affect rainfed agriculture across the continent, in particular in the maize-based cropping systems north of the equator.

森林通过蒸发蒸腾作用将水循环回大气，在维持全球降雨模式方面发挥着重要作用。我们提出了一种新的时空数据驱动模型，并评估了各种毁林情景对撒哈拉以南非洲降雨模式的影响，在那里，雨养农业是主要的收入来源，并为大部分人口提供食物。我们的模型基于卷积长短期记忆神经网络，并使用气候和植被时间序列数据的组合来预测降雨量并进行模拟实验。我们的结果表明，完全砍伐森林（即所有​​潮湿森林转变为短草地）将大大减少砍伐地区的降雨量。赤道之上，目前没有森林覆盖的大部分地区的降雨量也会减少。然而，完全砍伐森林会使南部非洲某些地区的降雨量略有增加，而其他地区的降雨量会减少。部分森林砍伐的影响在整个非洲也各不相同。在西非，即使是适度的树木覆盖损失（即 30%）也会降低降雨量，而在中非和南部非洲，需要达到 70% 的树木覆盖损失阈值才能降低降雨量。因此，剩余潮湿雨林地区的森林砍伐可能会严重影响整个大陆的雨养农业，特别是赤道以北以玉米为基础的种植系统。部分森林砍伐的影响在整个非洲也各不相同。在西非，即使是适度的树木覆盖损失（即 30%）也会降低降雨量，而在中非和南部非洲，需要达到 70% 的树木覆盖损失阈值才能降低降雨量。因此，剩余潮湿雨林地区的森林砍伐可能会严重影响整个大陆的雨养农业，特别是赤道以北以玉米为基础的种植系统。部分森林砍伐的影响在整个非洲也各不相同。在西非，即使是适度的树木覆盖损失（即 30%）也会降低降雨量，而在中非和南部非洲，需要达到 70% 的树木覆盖损失阈值才能降低降雨量。因此，剩余潮湿雨林地区的森林砍伐可能会严重影响整个大陆的雨养农业，特别是赤道以北以玉米为基础的种植系统。