The deforestation of the Earth has been done for thousands of years, with the intention of clearing land to enhance farming crops or any type of livestock. Tropical forests are considered to be contributed with developing countries and our needs for them are not being met. Neither local nor national needs are being met, which influences economic globalization. This means that the needs and wants of our population are contributing to the bearing of these. Deforestation, by definition is referred to as “the removal of forest cover as a result of human activity.”(Gove 593). Direct causes for deforestation are the interest in infrastructure expansion such as building or altering roads, the interest in agricultural expansion, and wood extraction for sources of fuel or coal. A single direct cause is typically rare for deforestation. Many processes work together to cause the deforestation of our lands, which leads to no direct cause, most of the time.
Even though a direct cause is hardly ever found, the biggest single cause of tropical deforestation is the conversion to crops and pastures. This is mostly used for subsistence, which is the average farmer’s daily work to meet needs through growing crops or raising livestock. Conversion to agricultural land usually is of interest from multiple factors. For example, when countries create infrastructure for a better transportation of goods or services in remote areas, is a factor. Road building is a factor that eliminates these remote areas of crops and pastures, to enhance trade. A limited amount of deforestation is caused by road building but is still deforestation. When doing so, this brings logging into play with the deforestation process. Logging is usually introduced f...
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...ith the deforestation process. Some night owls and common birds are decreasing in population. Our forests home many animals that are now at risk. Not only is deforestation harming animals and our water cycle, it also is harming us as individuals in time. It critically can damage our health after a period of time if kept up. Along with animals, crops, us as humans, it mainly effects our environment even more dangerously. Therefore, deforestation is only a harm to our world and the living organisms in it due to its deadly but overlooked effects on our economy.
Works Cited
Szalay, Jessie. "Deforestation: Facts, Causes, & Effects." LiveScience. TechMedia Network, 06 Mar. 2013. Web. 11 Dec 2013. .
Gove, Philip. Webster’s Third New International Dictionary. 3rd ed. Springfield: G. & C.
Merriam Company, 1966. Print.
Deforestation has accumulated many multifaceted controversies over time. The main one, however, is the impact deforestation has on water flow. People have different perceptions on how deforestation affects the flow of water, this lead to a controversy between conservationists and a group of theorists. Many years ago, water was used as a way for almost all the mills to function. Changes in the ecosystem depend on the rate and extent of deforestation and determines how drastic the changes will be.
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
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 .
Deforestation: an act of pure terrorism towards the forests of the Earth, the most evil and brutal punishment to wildlife imaginable. Every year, thousands of trees in multiple forests are chopped down either for the wood humans can make resources for or to make room for more humans to grow as they continue to rise in population. Many problems can result from deforestation: loss of habitat to animals that rely on the forest trees to survive, resulting in endangerment or extinction as the animals must forcefully move to another place to thrive in numbers while avoiding the invading humans, and the effects of potential global warming can occur due to the carbon dioxide released by the machinery used to bulldoze the trees down, and only a few
“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
Philip, M., & William F. 2004, ‘Tropical Deforestation and Greenhouse-gas Emissions’, Ecological Applications, (no publication information), Volume 14, Issue 4, pp. 982–986, viewed 23 April 2010,
This article describes the history of deforestation around the world and explaining how deforestation started as part of a civilizing process. Then the article tells that human populations increase causes deforestation because humans need more land for food, water, and for living purposes. Also in the last part of the article it talks about how the future of deforestation is worse than the present, even with our reforestation efforts the environment is being destroyed to fast for us to stop especially in the
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.
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.
Deforestation is a widely used term, but one with different meanings. Disturbance deforestation refers to all man made disturbances that alter a forest, these are the most common. This argumentative essay discusses the positive and negative aspects of deforestation. In the first part of the essay the pro arguments of deforestation will be discussed. For example, the issue of Global population and how forests are being used, land use and the ways forests contribute, wood use, forest growth, destruction and the reasons for cutting down the trees. The second half of the essay will cover the issues that are harmful to the environment because of deforestation. Many environmental issues take place everyday; a big question that arises, is if the global economy will ever finds middle on the issue of forest thinning. If deforestation was used only in the most crucial of times, the world might become a better place.
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...
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...
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.
Deforestation is the elimination of existing trees from the earth; attributable factors include urbanization, logging, ranching, and farming and to some extent land speculation. Land speculation can be included as cleared land is more valuable than forested land. Deforestation, done in the name of progress, and the long-term, devastating effects of it, is killing our planet.
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.