Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Deforestation general essay
An investigation into deforestation
An investigation into deforestation
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Deforestation general essay
Topic: Deforestation
General Purpose: To inform
Specific Purpose: Explain to my audience the effects of deforestation
Thesis: Forests provide the earth with a regulated climate, strong biodiversity, and good nutrient rich soil for plants to strive on.
I. Introduction
a. Attention Getter: Without the help of trees, we as humans would not exist.
b. Thesis: Forests provide the earth with a regulated climate, strong biodiversity, and good nutrient rich soil for plants to strive on.
c. Reason to Listen: You as the audience should listen and understand why our planet is becoming hotter and hotter, losing specialized species, and in-turn why plants are no longer able to survive for as long as they were able to before.
d. Credibility Statement: Over the last few weeks I have be researching my topic of deforestation. Also during high school I took a class which covered deforestation and the environment.
(Transition) Deforest station effects everyone around the world.
II. Body
a. General Information: First off, deforestation is the clearing of forests or areas with trees to be converted into something else after. There are a few different ways forests are cleared. Clear cutting is simply removing everything in sight. Patch cutting is the removal of trees in specified patches. Strip cutting is removing trees in selected strips. The most environmentally friendly method is known as selective cutting. This is the removal of only selected trees, leaving the others un-harmed. The technique used most during deforestation is the slash and burn technique. This uses the basic cutting method of clear cutting, but afterwards everything that remains is burned to ash.
b. First main point: Deforestation is caused by humans clear...
... middle of paper ...
... present gains are better than the long term negative effects.
b. Restate thesis: In reality forests are better left alone, forests provide the earth with a regulated climate, strong biodiversity, and good nutrient rich soil for plants to strive on.
c. Clincher: How much longer do you want humans to exist?
References
"Deforestation." National Geographic. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Feb. 2014. .
Lindsey, Rebecca. "Tropical Deforestation : Feature Articles." Tropical Deforestation : Feature Articles. NASA, 30 Mar. 2007. Web. 01 Mar. 2014. .
Szalay, Jessie. "Deforestation: Facts, Causes & Effects." LiveScience. TechMedia Network, 06 Mar. 2013. Web. 01 Mar. 2014. .
Forests cover 31% of the land area on our planet. They produce vital oxygen and provide homes for people and wildlife. Many of the world’s most threatened and endangered animals live in forests, and 1.6 billion people rely on benefits forests offer, including food, fresh water, clothing, traditional medicine and shelter (drug war facts, Page 1).
The ecosystem I have chosen is tropical rainforest. In the following paragraphs, I am going to firstly introduced the structure of tropical rainforest in brief, with the second part of the plant ecology and last the diversity within this ecosystem.
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 .
FAO: State of the World's Forests. Rome: Food and Agriculture Office of the United Nations; 2007. Print.
Deforestation is fast becoming one of the world’s worst environmental/geographical occurring disasters known to mankind, and is due to humankind’s greed, ignorance and carelessness when considering the future of our environment.
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.
Szalay, J. (2013, March 6). Deforestation: fact, causes & effects [Fact sheet]. Retrieved March 12, 2014, from LiveScience website: http://www.livescience.com/27692-deforestation.html
People are deforesting the planet for thousands of years, primarily to clear land for crops or stock. though tropical forests square measure for the most part confined to developing countries, they square measuren’t simply meeting native or national needs; economic economic process means the wants and desires of the worldwide population are bearing down on them also. Direct causes of deforestation square measure agricultural growth, wood extraction (e.g., work or wood harvest for domestic fuel or charcoal), and infrastructure growth like road building and urbanization. seldom is there one direct cause for deforestation. Most often, multiple processes work at the same time or consecutive to cause deforestation.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 repea...
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...
Rainforests once covered 14% of the worlds land surface, however now it only covers a mere 6%. It is estimated that all rainforests could be consumed in less than 40 years. Trees are becoming more needed and used everyday. We need them cut down for many reasons such as paper and timber, while also needing them ‘untouched’ for other reasons like oxygen, we have to ask ourselves, which is more important? At the current rate, most of the rainforests are being cut down for resources like paper and timber, but less importance is being placed on main resources like oxygen.
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
Forests are vital for life and have many important functions. They are home to millions of species and protect soil from erosion. Along with this they produce oxygen which is vital for human life, store carbon dioxide and help control climate. They also provide humans with shelter, food and medicines vital for life.
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.
The biosphere is sufficiently larger than anyone could ever imagine. It could possibly have up to thirty million different types animals, plants, fungi, and all other organisms. Considering the ocean covers seventy percent of Earth and all of it’s matter, scientists and oceanographers have only explored and mapped five percent of it. This amazing fact shows us, humans, how little we all know about the biosphere. The life forms of the biosphere of Earth vary from animals, plants, fungi, and various others. Out of the possible thirty million different species of life forms, scientists have only discovered a small portion of over one million of them. Every single one of these species need trees...