Rainforests: Biodiversity Value and Deforestation Impact

984 Words2 Pages

A rainforest is an area of high, mostly evergreen trees with a high amount of rainfall. The biome is the earth’s oldest living ecosystem, being incredibly complex and diverse. The importance of the rainforest, is the huge biodiversity of the place due to the 80 – 90% of species that can be found there, even when it only covers 6% of the Earth’s surface. It is also often called the lungs of the planet, by absorbing carbon dioxide and producing oxygen upon which many species depend on. Rainforests also help stabilize the world’s climate and maintain the water cycle by producing rainfall all around the planet. Every year humans are cutting down more and more rainforest all around the globe. The reasons for this deforestation are to have grazing land for cattle, contraction of roads, extraction of energy and minerals and many more. Yet this report will focus on the monoculture of rubber tree plantations on previous rainforest land.
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 …show more content…

Monoculture rubber plantations have no biodiversity and need ongoing human intervention (including fertilization) because weeds must be removed using pesticides and herbicides. These chemicals have a huge impact on the natural species to the area and further contribute to the loss of biodiversity. Forests have a complex, rich-biodiversity, self-regenerating system, that consists of soil, a microclimate, water and a huge variety of animals and plants in mutual coexistence. When the complex forests get cleared, it causes an imbalance on the ecosystem of all of the species that help each other existences, contributing to the increase of the loss of

More about Rainforests: Biodiversity Value and Deforestation Impact

Open Document