Belo monte - The proposed Belo Monte dam will be one of the biggest in the world, but deforestation could limit the amount of energy generated

Deforestation in the Amazon region could significantly reduce the amount of electricity produced from hydropower, says a new study.

Scientists say the rainforest is critical in generating the streams and rivers that ultimately turn turbines.

If trees continue to be felled, the energy produced by one of the world's biggest dams could be cut by a third.

The study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Many countries in tropical regions are turning to hydropower as an untapped source of energy. In Brazil around 45 new hydro plants are in the planning stage.

“We now have very strong evidence that Brazil's ability to generate electricity depends on forest conservation” Dr Daniel Nepstad

Rainforests, by their very name, are prime locations for the dams that are usually required to create the force of water needed to generate electric power.

Until now the presumption has been that cutting down the trees near a dam actually increased the amount of water flowing into the dams.

Trees of life

But in this new study the researchers took a broader look at the climate projections for the Amazon basin and not just at the rivers on which the dams were built.

They found that rainforests are more critical than previously thought as they produce the rain that fills the streams that ultimately drives the rivers and the turbines.

A landscape may look healthy, but how

does it sound, and what does that say about how its wildlife is doing?

It's a question Bernie Krause has spent much of his life trying to answer. To

do so, he's recorded the sounds of thousands of places in far-flung corners of

the world.

He coined the word "biophany" to describe these recordings. These soundscapes

have helped him show what happens to animals in stressful environments, and

explain where our language comes from.

It wasn't what he originally planned to do.

Bernie Krause started as a classic musician. He joined the US folk group The

Weavers in 1963, but became famous for introducing some of the biggest bands in

the world to the synthesiser in the mid-1960s.

George Harrison, Simon & Garfunkel and The Doors all learned from Krause

and his partner Paul Beaver.

Beaver and Krause composed and played the Moog synthesiser with the Monkees

and provided soundtracks for big Hollywood blockbusters. They're credited with

introducing the synthesiser to pop music and film.

But it was a chance encounter while recording an album that put Krause's life

on to a different track.

"We were doing an album for Warner Brothers called 'In a Wild Sanctuary'

which was the first album ever to use ecology as its theme, and the first ever

to use natural soundscapes as a component of orchestration," he said.