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Deforestation

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33 views

Deforestation

Uploaded by

zé
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Deforestation

(slide) Deforestation is the removal of a forest or stand of trees from land that is then
converted to non-forest use. Deforestation can involve conversion of forest land to farms,
ranches, or urban use. The most concentrated deforestation occurs in tropical rainforests.

(slide) Forests cover more than 30% of the Earth's land surface, according to the World
Wildlife Fund. These forested areas can provide food, medicine and fuel for more than a billion
people. Worldwide, forests provide 13.4 million people with jobs in the forest sector, and
another 41 million people have jobs related to forests.

Forests are a resource, but they are also large, undeveloped swaths of land that can be
converted for purposes such as agriculture and grazing. In North America, about half the
forests in the eastern part of the continent were cut down for timber and farming between the
1600s and late 1800s, according to National Geographic.

(slide) Today, most deforestation is happening in the tropics. Areas that were
inaccessible in the past are now within reach as new roads are constructed through the dense
forests. A 2017 report by scientists at the University of Maryland showed that the tropics lost
about 61,000 square miles (158,000 square kilometers) of forest in 2017 — an area the size of
Bangladesh.

(slide)The removal of trees without sufficient reforestation has resulted in habitat


damage, biodiversity loss, and aridity. Deforestation causes extinction, changes to climatic
conditions, desertification, and displacement of populations, as observed by current conditions
and in the past through the fossil record. Deforestation also has adverse impacts on
biosequestration of atmospheric carbon dioxide, increasing negative feedback cycles
contributing to global warming. Global warming also puts increased pressure on communities
who seek food security by clearing forests for agricultural use and reducing arable land more
generally. Deforested regions typically incur significant other environmental effects such as
adverse soil erosion and degradation into wasteland.

(slide) Often, deforestation occurs when forested area is cut and cleared to make way
for agriculture or grazing. The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) reports that just four
commodities are responsible for tropical deforestation: beef, soy, palm oil and wood products.

(slide) Natural fires in tropical forests tend to be rare but intense. Human-lit fires are
commonly used to clear land for agricultural use. First, valuable timber is harvested, then the
remaining vegetation is burned to make way for crops like soy or cattle grazing. In 2019, the
number of human-lit fires in Brazil skyrocketed. As of August 2019, more than 80,000 fires
burned in the Amazon, an increase of almost 80% from 2018, National Geographic reported.

Forests can be found from the tropics to high-latitude areas. They are home to 80% of
terrestrial biodiversity, containing a wide array of trees, plants, animals and microbes,
according to the World Bank, an international financial institution. Some places are especially
diverse — the tropical forests of New Guinea, for example, contain more than 6% of the
world's species of plants and animals.

(slide) According to a 2018 FAO report, three-quarters of the Earth’s freshwater comes
from forested watersheds, and the loss of trees can affect water quality. The UN's 2018 State
of the World's Forests report found that over half the global population relies on forested
watersheds for their drinking water as well as water used for agriculture and industry.

(slide) Trees also absorb carbon dioxide, mitigating greenhouse gas emissions
produced by human activity. As climate change continues, trees play an important role in
carbon sequestration, or the capture and storage of excess carbon dioxide. Tropical trees alone
are estimated to provide about 23% of the climate mitigation that's needed to offset climate
change, according to the World Resources Institute, a nonprofit global research institute.

Deforestation not only removes vegetation that is important for removing carbon
dioxide from the air, but the act of clearing the forests also produces greenhouse gas
emissions. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations says that
deforestation is the second-leading cause of climate change. (The first is the burning of fossil
fuels.) In fact, deforestation accounts for nearly 20% of greenhouse gas emissions.

Deforestation solutions
(slide) Developing alternatives to deforestation can help decrease the need for tree
clearing. For example, the desire to expand the amount of land used for agriculture is an
attractive reason to deforest an area. But if people adopted sustainable farming practices or
employed new farming technologies and crops, the need for more land might be diminished,
according to the UN's Sustainable Forest Management Toolbox.

Forests can also be restored, through replanting trees in cleared areas or simply
allowing the forest ecosystem to regenerate over time. The goal of restoration is to return the
forest to its original state, before it was cleared, according to the U.S. Forest Service. The
sooner a cleared area is reforested, the quicker the ecosystem can start to repair itself.
Afterward, wildlife will return, water systems will reestablish, carbon will be sequestered and
soils will be replenished.

Everyone can do their part to curb deforestation. We can buy certified wood products,
go paperless whenever possible, limit our consumption of products that use palm oil and plant
a tree when possible.

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