Deforestation is trees being cut down on a massive scale to supply us with our everyday needs, by logging, fires, and land-clearing for agriculture and cattle grazing. They are cut down for many reasons, but it mostly relates back to money or people needing to provide for families.
The biggest factor of deforestation is agriculture. Farmers are cutting down forests to make more room for planting crops and grazing livestock. Often, they will cut small acres by cutting down trees and then burning them, this process is known as ‘slash and burn’ agriculture. Another reason is logging operations, which provide the world’s wood and paper products. This means countless trees have to be cut each year (12 million hectares).
Loggers, some of which act illegally, build roads to access more and more remote forests. Also, growing urban sprawl is a result for forests being cut down to make more room.
There are many negative affects fromdeforestation to the environment, such as the impact it has on loss habitat for many species – many of which are becoming endangered or worst, extinct, also the effect it has on climate change.
It is a problem for animal’s habitats because species (thousands of which are still to be discovered) are becoming endangered or are being completely wiped out (it is believed that each year 3,000 – 30,000 animal species become extinct). They are unable to adapt to new surroundings and the biological cycle will be affected.
Deforestation also has a huge effect on the climate. Trees help perpetuate the water cycle by returning the water vapour back to the atmosphere. Also, they consume carbon dioxide, which is a greenhouse gas that fuels global warming, but burning the trees also releases more carbon dioxide, along with methane, which is another harmful greenhouse gas. That means, the fewer trees there are, the larger the amount of greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere, thus speeding up global warming.
There are campaigners however, trying to find solutions to these problems. A well known one is Greenpeace, another is REDD “Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation”. REDD is paying poor countries, such as New Guinea, to protect their forests. They would allow countries that can reduce emissions from deforestation to be paid for doing so.
A workable solution would be to balance the amount of trees cut by planting enough young trees to replace them that had fallen.
References:
http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/deforestation-overview/
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/eye/deforestation/effect.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/24/redd-reducing-emissions-from-deforestation
