“The world’s rainforests could completely vanish in a hundred years at the current rate of deforestation.” Says National Geographic. The world’s forests play and important role in providing everyday necessary benefits such as food, water, shelter, clothing, traditional medicine, and most importantly, they maintain an equilibrium in the world’s environment, which if drastically altered, can negatively affect its surroundings. The two main causes that contribute to the deterioration and or extinction of the world’s forests are deforestation and illegal logging. Deforestation is the eradication of vast forests without replacing the lost trees by simultaneously planting new ones. Not all deforestation is intentional. Deforestation can be caused by natural wildfires or overgrazing. Intentional deforestation may be attributed to illegal logging. These individuals who contribute to illegal logging, intentionally harvest trees in a number that is more than necessary. They harvest trees in areas where there are protected species, and in areas where logging is prohibited. Illegal logging companies take business away from companies that follow the law and participate in fair logging with set limitations and regulations. And in order to keep track of and limit the immense number of forests being cut down every year, the government must take action. The government should monitor illegal logging and deforestation of forests which in turn negatively affects out already fragile environment by initiating soil erosion; a loss of species; community disturbances; and carbon emissions into the atmosphere.
As was previously stated, soil erosion is a main contributor to the deterioration of forests caused by deforestation and illegal logging. The r...
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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.
Tropical rain forests across the globe are currently threatened by massive deforestation for logging, grazing, and cultivation (Otzen 1993). Such land-use practices alter temperature regimes (Fernandes and Sanford 1995) as well as ground, soil, and surface water, flora, fauna, and microorganisms (Otzen 1993). These changes may result in a loss of soil organic matter, a decrease in soil fertility (Garcia-Oliva et al. 1994, Tissen et al. 1994), severe soil erosion (Otzen 1993), and changes in soil structure and chemistry (Fernandes and Sanford 1995, Sollins et al. 1995, Montgagnini and Sancho 1994.)
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.
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
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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...
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.
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...