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Effects of deforestation on earth
The Impact of Deforestation on the Environment
Effects of deforestation on earth
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It is predicted that in approximately forty to one hundred years from now, there will no longer be any rainforest. People have been deforesting the Earth for thousands of years, primarily to clear land for crops or livestock. Deforestation happens in many different ways: when trees are cut down to grow crops, for livestock, logging so wood can be used for building things like houses and furniture, for roads and neighborhoods, for firewood, and forest fires. Deforestation can also be good for farming purposes and making houses.
Deforestation began about 450 years ago by European civilization. The trees were the only source ancient civilization had available for firewood and shelter. Forest produce vital oxygen and provide homes for people
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Yes deforestation destroys land the animals live on, but it also makes useful land for farming purpose. The land is used a lot for the food that shipped around the world and eventually consumed. The land is not only used to grow food. It is also used for things like improving road systems and economy stimulating businesses can be built.
Deforestation helps make civilization opportunities. A reporter from Nature World News named Luts stated "Forests also provide additional benefits to society - water and nutrient retention capabilities, providing habitat for a myriad of bird and animal species, aesthetic beauty, cultural and religious values to residents," Deforestation does not only affect the world negatively, but it provides additional benefits. When trees are cut down, the wood is used for a purpose. The wood from trees are used for lumber and other types of wood products. Some of the wood is used as firewood to keep warm. Deforestation also creates a strong revenue source for governments. This helps to stimulate the economy, especially in developing countries. Deforestation provides land for people who are not as fortunate. A vast majority of the land is unusable, so this helps feed hundreds of starving people. Deforestation may provide better climate benefits for certain areas than if the trees were left standing. Deforestation has economic and climate benefits in high-latitude areas where snowfall is common and timber productivity is low. At high elevation and latitude, the forests in White Mountain National Forest in New Hampshire receive substantial amounts of snowfall. Deforestation can help with places that receive lots of snow. Deforestation does not always have to be a negative topic, sometimes deforestation can be beneficial in some
Alina Bradford from Live Science, explained in her article about deforestation and how there are different causes of deforestation such as, selling trees for products such as paper, homes, house hold furniture, and other house products. She also states that other causes of deforestation are making room for agriculture purposes, and to create room for cattle ranching as well. On the downfall though there are disadvantages of deforestation as well too as she explains. One of them in fact is deforestation is contributing to climate change and also the greenhouse effect too as well by emitting a great amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the earth’s atmosphere. The effect from that happening is carbon dioxide is a greenhouse which absorbs heat from the sun and doesn’t let it escape into space. As that doing so, the Earth is heating up each year due to deforestation. From that, it will cause global warming and climate change too. There are causes and different purposes for deforestation but there are significant effects that could end up due to deforestation based on Alina Bradford’s
Deforestation is the clearing of a forest and/or cutting down of trees for human benefits such as agriculture, wood exports, etc. Deforestation is the cause of numerous environmental impacts such as habitat loss, flooding and soil erosion. It can also cause climate change, by reducing the amount of rainfall and changing the amount of sunlight reflected from Earth’s surface and increases the risk of forest . Tree growth is important for biodiversity because they absorb carbon dioxide which is a harmful greenhouse gas . However, since deforestation reduces natural carbon sinks, it disrupts the balance between oxygen and carbon dioxide in the air causing the amount of carbon dioxide in the air to increase. This poses a serious threat since carbon dioxide traps the sun’s heat and radiated light inside the earth’s atmosphere. So, with the increase in carbon dioxide more heat is trapped and thus adding to the effects of global warming. Among the many places where deforestation takes place, Amazon seems to be one of the most affected ones. More than 20 percent of it is already gone, and much more of it is severely threatened due to deforestation . It is estimated that the Amazon alone is vanishing at a rate of 20,000 square miles a year .
Most of the positive implications of deforestation are for the economy. Rainforest land is cut down and converted into a monoculture rubber plantation, to provide necessary resources for humans, in this case rubber. There are not a lot of positive implications about deforestation and they are mostly overruled by the large
Deforestation began with man’s ability to manipulate his environment. Wood has always been a primary source for shelter and has been affected by human expansion. As the worlds population grew, so to did the need for wood to make housing. As cities grew so did the demand for space to accommodate the growing population. Throughout history and even today, man has manipulated the environment affecting it’s resources.
“The Earth is 4.6 billion years old. Scaling to 46 years, human have been here 4 hours, the industrial revolution began 1 minute ago, and in that time, we’ve destroyed more than half the world’s forests.” - Unknown. One major environmental problem in our world is deforestation - what is that, you ask? According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, deforestation is the action or process of clearing of forests. Some consequences of this include a large contribution to global warming and climate change (about 1.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide each year), loss of biodiversity especially in tropical rainforests, and the extinction of many known or yet to be discovered species. But, through some Debt-for-Nature Swaps, leaving forests
Environmental issues affect every life on this planet from the smallest parasite to the human race. There are many resources that humans and animal needs to survive; some of the most obvious resources come from the forests. Forests make up a large percentage of the globe. The forests have global implications not just on life but on the quality of it. Trees improve the quality of the air that species breath, determine rainfall and replenish the atmosphere. The wood from the forests are used everyday form many useful resources. Moreover, thinning the forests increases the amount of available light, nutrients and water for the remaining trees. Deforestation (forest thinning) is one of the most critical issues of environmental problems that are occurring today.
Though deforestation has increased at an alarming rate throughout the past fifty years, deforestation has been performed during the course of history. According to the World Resources Institute, a majority of the world’s enduring naturally occurring forests are found in Alaska, Canada, Russia and the Northwestern Amazon. Research has demonstrated forests are more likely to be destroyed and repurposed where economic revenues tied to agriculture and pasture are prominent, typically attributed to advantageous weather conditions, or lower expenses of demolishing the forest and delivering merchandises to the global
What deforestation will mean in the future will be that most of the forests on the planet will be gone and a whole lot of different species of animals will be extinct because the deforestation would destroy all kinds of different animal species habitats and destroy where they get there food and water and the things that they would need to
Deforestation is destroying species. The Amazon Rainforest is home to about 50% of all species on earth. Many of these species are going to be in danger because their home is disappearing. Many acres of the Amazon Rainforest is destroyed every day. This means that everyday species who live on those acres lose their homes. When people want to clear land in the forest they can use a method called slash and burn. The slash and burn method clears big sections of land fast although it does not save any lumber. This method creates a large amount of carbon dioxide gas and this is no good for the animals. Many species will die if we continue doing what we are now.
Deforestation, defined by biologist Charles Southwick as "the destruction of forests; may involve clear-cutting or selective logging" (p. 365), is a predominantly human-driven process that is dramatically altering ecosystems worldwide. "Clear-cutting" involves the indiscriminant removal of every single plant and tree species from within a selected area. The other major process of deforestation, "selective logging," focuses removal efforts on only specific, predetermined tree species within a chosen area. The statistics gathered about human deforestation over time are considerable, and they can be somewhat controversial. Depending on the source and the location selected, the magnitude of deforestation varies. Southwick estimates that, approximately 10,000 years ago, 6.2 billion hectares (23.9 million square miles) of forest existed on earth (p. 117). That figure is equivalent to 45.5% of the earth's total land. He further estimates that, by 1990, this amount had declined 30%, with only 4.3 billion hectares of forest remaining (p. 117). Southwick also acknowledges other estimates that place the total amount of deforestation between 50% and 75% (p. 117). NASA has similar deforestation statistics that confirm these trends. According to their website, 16.5% of the Brazilian Amazon forests have been destroyed. They also note similar magnitudes of deforestation in Southeast Asia (Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam), despite the significantly smaller total area of forest within these countries. These grim figures are somewhat tempered by the NASA finding that, over the past ten years, the deforestation rate has declined from 6,200 square miles per year to 4,800 square miles per year. Though this trend is n...
What is also becoming increasingly clear is the effect that forests have on the climate and the climate has on forests, and how changes in one system will affect the other. Losing forest makes it worse. Clearing forests also releases large amounts of carbon dioxide. Worldwide deforestation means we don’t have as many trees to absorb the extra CO2. This means more of it stays in the atmosphere, trapping more heat. Forest are cut down for many reasons, but most of them are related to money or to people’s need to provide for their families. The biggest driver of deforestation is agriculture. Farmers cut forest to provide more room for planting crops or grazing livestock. Often many small farmers will each clear a few acres to feed their families by cutting down trees and burning them in process known as “ slash and burn” agriculture. Therefore, not all deforestations is intentional. Some is caused by a combination of human and natural factors like wildfires and subsequent overgrazing, which may prevent the growth of young trees. Deforestations has many negative effects on the environment. The most dramatic impact is a loss of habitat for million of species. So seventy percent of Earth’s land animals and plants live in forest, and many cannot survive the deforestation that destroy their homes. A more workable solution is to carefully manage
People have been deforesting the Earth for thousands of years, primarily to clear land for crops or livestock. Although tropical forests are largely confined to developing countries, they aren’t just meeting local or national needs; economic globalization means that the needs and wants of the global population are bearing down on them as well. Direct causes of deforestation are agricultural expansion, wood extraction (e.g., logging or wood harvest for domestic fuel or charcoal), and infrastructure expansion such as road building and urbanization. Rarely is there a single direct cause for deforestation. Most often, multiple processes work simultaneously or sequentially to cause deforestation.
An immediate effect of deforestation is removing natural habitats of several species residing in the forest. This has caused many different species to become endangered or extinct. The atmosphere is also impacted when deforestation occurs. Trees take in carbon dioxide and produce oxygen. When trees are removed less oxygen is produced and more carbon dioxide remains damaging the ozone layer. “The reason that logging is so bad for the climate is that when trees are felled they release the carbon they are storing into the atmosphere, where it mingles with greenhouse gases from other sources and contributes to global warming accordingly” (Moss and Scheer 1). There is also a physical impact of deforestation. When forests are removed the soil is disturbed and loose, so when a large rainstorm comes through the area all of the loose soil is washed away. This causes major landslides and mudslides. This can damage homes, roadways, business, and endanger life. There is a major need to change the world’s dependency on wood and land before it is too
Deforestation, clearing or clearance is the removal of a forest where the land is converted to a non-forest use. Examples of deforestation include conversion of forestland to farms, ranches, or urban use. The term deforestation is often misused to describe any activity where all trees in an area are removed. However this is not true in certain areas the clearing of all trees in an area can be considered a regeneration harvest. Deforestation occurs for many reasons: trees are cut down to be used or sold as fuel or timber, while...
Scientists themselves are just beginning to understand the serious problems caused by deforestation. Deforestation occurs all over the world by all types of people. Peasant farmers even add to the problem because in most tropical countries the farmers are very poor only making between eight hundred and fifty four hundred dollars annually (NASA Facts). Therefore, they do not have enough money to buy what they need to live therefore they must farm to raise crops for food and to sell. In these poor countries the majority of people are peasant farmers this farming adds up to a great deal of deforestation. These farmers chop down a small area of trees for there plot to farm on and burn the tree trunks (NASA Facts). The combined number of farmers maintaining this process creates a great deal of clearing and burning of the land they need to cultivate, which results in land being treeless. Commercial logging is also another common form of deforestation. This commercial logging wipes out massive amounts of land sometimes deforesting several miles at...