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Causes effects and solutions to deforestation in Amazon
Negative effects of deforestation in the amazon
Causes effects and solutions to deforestation in Amazon
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When the Portuguese landed in Brazil 500 years ago the sight that greeted them was of a huge rain forest, which then ran along much of Brazil’s Atlantic coast. In more recent times, there has been an outcry over the destruction of the much larger Amazon forest. But its devastation is nothing compared to Brazil’s Atlantic forest. About 86% of Brazil’s Amazon forest is still intact but only about 7% of the Atlantic forest remains. In this paper, I will explain why the Atlantic forest was destroyed, why deforestation happens, and the effects of rain forest destruction and the effect it is having on the Earth.
Much of the Atlantic forest was destroyed to make way for farmers to plant sugar, coffee, and other crops, and later for growing cities like Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Between 1990 and 1995, 1.2 million acres were destroyed (Reid, 2000).
Clearance for living space, commercial logging, for farming, roads and railways, forest fires, and mining and drilling are all connected with deforestation. People have been living in and around tropical rain forests for tens of thousands of years, taking what they needed from the wealth of natural resources available without compromising their environment. However, in the last 200 years populations have expanded, requiring more and more space for housing and farming. For example, Costa Rica has a population of over 3 million people, heavily concentrated in the Central Valley. Well over one-half of the national population lives in this area, which represents only 5% of the country’s land area, and almost one-half of the population is considered to live in urban areas. The population growth rate is relatively high and if it continues at the present rate, the population will double in only 28 years (Hecht, 1989). Commercial logging can occur selectively, where only the economically valuable species are cut or by clear cutting, where all the trees are cut. Commercial logging uses heavy machinery, such as bulldozers, road graders, and log skidders, to remove cut trees and build roads.
Another cause of deforestation is known as shifting cultivating. Indigenous people have farmed the rain forest, cutting down trees to allow cultivation of crops and grazing space for animals, and moving on when the soil becomes less fertile. This is no threat to the forests; provided that used areas are left to regenerate for long periods before repeating the process.
The main reason deforestation happens, is because of farming. They need to clear out land in order to plant crops and vegetables. Another loss from deforestation is that many animals lose their habitat. The loss of animals habitats will lead to migration, or possibly even extinction. And when this happens this will ruin the food chains which will affect even more animals.
Governments in these countries need to stop thinking of forests as a renewable resource. The rate at which they are harvesting these areas drives them beyond the boundaries of sustainability. The efforts required by reforestation may not initially be cost effective, but it will result in not only the survivability of the environment, but of the country’s economy. Widespread awareness of these ideas will help fight against the natural human tendency towards instant gratification and short-term goals. Different methods of logging can be utilized to allow the rainforests to survive and regrow naturally and at a sustainable
The Amazon Rain Forest Is in Danger of Being Destroyed" by Devadas Vittal. Rain Forests. HaiSong Harvey, Ed. At Issue Series. Greenhaven Press, 2002. Reprinted from Devadas Vittal, Introduction: What Is the Amazon Rainforest? Internet: http://www.homepages.go.com/homepages/d/v/i/dvittal/amazon/intro.html, November 1999, by permission of the author. http://ic.galegroup.com/ic/ovic/ViewpointsDetailsPage/ViewpointsDetailsWindow?displayGroupName=Viewpoints&disableHighlighting=false&prodId=OVIC&action=e&windowstate=normal&catId=&documentId=GALE%7CEJ3010021212&mode=view
The introduction of cattle ranching industries in the 1960s set the forefront for current Brazilian rainforest deforestation figures. During this time, development subsidy programs encouraged Brazilians to clear rainforest for pastureland and invest in new cattle ranches (Pancheco). Over the last 40 years, Brazil has destroyed 700,00 square kilometers of rainforest, an area about the size of Texas (BBC) (Enchanted Lear...
The negative impact on the environment of the planned human expansion is tremendous. It has been estimated that 10 million hectares of the Amazon forest have been destroyed due to clear-cutting, burning, slash-and-burn agriculture and conversion to pastures. Deforestation is caused mainly by road construction since 74% of the converted areas is within 50 km of roads.1 This clearly shows that frontier expansion and colonization for economical and social reasons has a devastating effect on the environment. The Brazilian Amazon is the largest piece of undisturbed rain forest and, unfortunately, this natural treasure is being damaged very carelessly and at an extremely high rate.
Countries such as Brazil and Indonesia have been greatly affected by deforestation with well over two million hectares of naturally forested land now rendered barren (See appendix 1).
Nowadays deforestation is the one of the most important and controversial environmental issues in the world. Deforestation is cutting down, clearing away or burning trees or forests. Particularly tropical rainforests are the most waning type of forests because of its location in developing countries such as Indonesia, the Philippines, India, central African countries and Brazil. Deforestation rate in those regions is high enough to worry about, because of large economic potential of forest areas. As the result of causes such as agriculture land expansion, logging for timber, fire blazing and settling infrastructure there might be serious impacts in future. For instance, extinction of endemic species of animals and plants which will be feral, increase of greenhouse gas emissions which may lead to global warming and consecutive catastrophes, destruction of home for indigenous residents which is considered as violation of human rights. Some people can argue with these drawbacks telling that deforestation have more valuable benefits such as growth of economics, production of food and providing better opportunities for life for poor families. However, these benefits are quite temporary and government of that countries and world organisations tries to halt deforestation proposing several solutions. Deforestation problem is especially acute in the Brazilian Amazon, where its rate is much high comparing with other regions. This paper will describe world-wide rainforests, causes and effects of deforestation, and evaluate possible solutions of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon.
The destruction of this forest releases 340 million tons of carbon per year according to the World Wildlife Foundation, or WWF, which in turn causes climate changes everywhere around the world. Undiscovered species can hold the key to curing a plethora of diseases, but if those species become extinct, those keys are lost forever. If nothing is done to prevent this, the world’s treasure trove of bio-diversity will cease to exist, creating irreversible damage to not only the South American people, but also the rest of the world. Conversion of the tropical forest into cropland and pasture began a long time ago in Ecuador, before its secession from Spain. Their major crop was cocoa, which was grown along the waterways to be exported as their main source of trade.
The population explosion is forcing people to migrate away from the city and into the surrounding area, which is causing an urbanization of the rural areas. To support this spreading, roads and cities are being constructed where plant and animal rich ecosystems exist. One region of particular global concern is the Amazon Rainforest and the effect of the spreading population from the coastal areas of Brazil. Currently, Brazil has a population of 172,860,370 people. A majority of this population currently depends on the local rainforest to support human growth. It has been reported that at current deforestation rates, only scattered remnants of tropical rainforests will exits and a quarter of a the species on Earth will be extinct by the time today's preschoolers retire. However, because of the ever-growing need for development, the soil, the trees, and the wildlife of the Amazon Rainforest are suffering at the hands of a demanding...
It was estimated that 21% of tropical worldwide forests were burnt down from 1981 to 2000 (Bawa et al., 2004). The main reason this occurs is that cities need infrastructures to communicate and support the rates of increasing populations, and this can only happen if forests are cut down (Mather, 1990). Therefore, the construction of roads, dams, and bridges contributes to the deforestation, not only by polluting the air with contaminating machineries, but also by allowing colonists to exploit land’s resources. Thus, if on one hand infrastructures help the export of agricultural products, on the other hand, they encourage eager colonists to exploit oil mines and hydropower dams (Wilkie et al., 2000). The development of these projects is of worldwide concern, if we consider that tropical forests help to clear about 20% of carbon emissions that globally destroy significant carbon sinks (Woodcock, 2002).
The total amount of habitat affected in the Brazilian Amazon was up from 208,000 km^2 when first analyzed in 1978 to 588,000 km^2 when revisited in 1988 (Skole and Tucker 1993:1909). As a primary reaction to the sudden increase of deforestation between the years of 1978 and 1988 the biodiversity of plants, animals, and habitat space decreased (Skole and Tucker 1993). When comparing the data sets above, the question that scientists and environmentalist began asking, was why this sudden increase in deforestation over a 10 year span was occurring (Skole and Tucker
Deforestation is not a recent act. It has been practiced throughout human history. About nine-tenths of all deforestation occurred before 1950, but it has increased dramatically over the last 60 years. Trees provide shelter,warmth and food. So its not a surprise that chopping down trees is an age old human activity. Wood from trees is used to build shelters and fuel fires. Fires are used for warmth and to cook food. Nuts and fruit from the trees are food for both humans and animals. Medicines and dyes are also made from the nuts and fruit from the tree. When the trees were cleared,there was rich soil to grow crops with. Back then, stones and flint axes were used to cut down the trees, but for the last sixty years, power saws have been used, and that has made a huge impact. (Williams, 2001).
The single biggest direct cause of tropical deforestation is conversion to cropland and pasture, mostly for subsistence, which is growing crops or raising livestock to meet daily needs. The conversion to agricultural land usually results from multiple direct factors. For example, countries build roads into remote areas to improve overland transportation of goods. The road development itself causes a limited amount of deforestation. But roads also provide entry to previously inaccessible—and often unclaimed—land. Logging, both legal and illegal, often follows road expansion (and in some cases is the reason for the road expansion). When loggers have harvested an area’s valuable timber, they move on. The roads and the logged areas become a magnet for settlers—farmers and ranchers who slash and burn the remaining forest for cropland or cattle pasture, completing the deforestation chain that began with road building. In other cases, forests that have been degraded by logging become fire-prone and are eventually deforested by repeated accidental fires from adjacent farms or pastures.
Borges-Mendez, Ramon. "Sustainable Development and Participatory Practices in Community Forestry: the Case of FUNDECOR in Costa Rica." Local Environment 13.4 (2008): 367-383. Print.
Deforestation is the amputation of trees from forest areas more swiftly than they can be replanted or regenerate naturally. The fact that trees play an incredibly momentous part in stabilising climate, atmospheric composition and soil structure, removing trees rapidly becomes a major problem. There are numerous reasons behind the felling of trees by mankind. The Amazon basin is a prime example of humans exploiting rainforests. Within this tropical rainforest lie a vast variety of tree species, with many uses, giving humans even more reason to exploit this area.