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Solving the problem of deforestation
Solving the problem of deforestation
Literature review on causes of deforestation
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Deforestation is the elimination of existing trees from the earth; attributable factors include urbanization, logging, ranching, and farming and to some extent land speculation. Land speculation can be included as cleared land is more valuable than forested land. Deforestation, done in the name of progress, and the long-term, devastating effects of it, is killing our planet.
To understand the effects of deforestation one must understand the reasoning behind the decision to clear forestlands. Only in recent history, have studies been conducted to measure the impact that deforestation has placed upon the Earth.
Urbanization, or the clearing of land to build, is deforestation done in the name of progress. Land has been cleared for centuries to make way for the building of cities and homes. In fact, the lumber itself is used for shelter and the furniture within it. Industrialization can also be included here. Industries often cause air pollution. Without sufficient trees to process the CO2, the air we breathe contains harmful chemicals that thicken the atmosphere and hold in the radiation from the sun’s rays, which in turn warms the planet.
Commercial logging for lumber or fuel supplies is another factor. The cutting down of trees for a profit is also depleting our forests. Another travesty of commercial logging is the damage caused to other trees that surround or are in the path of the trees being harvested. Logging also increases the destruction to forests in the event of fire as outline in the article entitled “Deforestation in Brazilian Amazonia: History, Rates and Consequences” written by Philip M. Fearnside, “Logging greatly increase the susceptibility of forest to fire. Once fire enters it kills trees and increase...
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...ll persons. Only when the population of Earth contributes as a whole to stopping deforestation, will this dire situation be resolved. Deforestation must be stopped; our very survival depends on it.
Works Cited
Allen, Julia C., and Douglas F. Barnes. "The Cause of Deforestation in Developing Countries." Annals of the Association of American Geographers 1985: 163-184. Print.
Borges-Mendez, Ramon. "Sustainable Development and Participatory Practices in Community Forestry: the Case of FUNDECOR in Costa Rica." Local Environment 13.4 (2008): 367-383. Print.
Charles, HRH Prince. "We Have Only Seven Years Before We Lose the Levers of Control." United Nations Climate Change Conference. Copenhagen, Denmark. 15 Dec. 2009. Speech.
Fearnside, Philip M. "Deforestation in Brazilian Amazonia: History, Rates, and Consequences." Conservation Biology 19.3 (2005): 680-688. Print.
We can help stop the effects of deforestation by planting more trees, going paperless, and eat vegetarian meals as often as possible. Thirty eight percent of Ontario's wood is used for paper. We can save a lot of trees if people tried and cared more towards the world. In southern Canada they are planting trees where they are being cut. This will keep the amount of trees
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 .
Deforestation has always been a part of what people do. When people came from England, they had to make room for themselves to live. People cannot completely stop deforestation. The main effects of deforestation is the loss of species and animal habitats. To try to deter from this, people can respect wildlife conservation projects. This means that people can stop trying to tear down forests that have endangered plants or animals in them. People should see to detrimental effects that deforestation can have. Most of all, people need to have a understanding of what global warming is. These ways can help to slow down
Hijjar, Reem, David G. McGrath, Robert A. Kozak, and John L. Innes. "Framing Community Forestry Challenges with a Broader Lens: Case Studies from the Brazilian Amazon." Journal of Environmental Management 92 (2011): 2159-169. ScienceDirect. 06 May 2011. Web. 30 Oct. 2011.
We have known that deforestation can lead to decline in biodiversity and land degradation. As John Donne has said, “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main”, not only governments are supposed to be responsible for deforestation, individuals should also take responsibilities. There are some things that we can do to help better the situation. For instance, we can refuse to use throwaway chopsticks and purchase wooden furniture, reduce the usage of papers by printing less, and educate others to cherish the forest resources.
“The Earth is 4.6 billion years old. Scaling to 46 years, human have been here 4 hours, the industrial revolution began 1 minute ago, and in that time, we’ve destroyed more than half the world’s forests.” - Unknown. One major environmental problem in our world is deforestation - what is that, you ask? According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, deforestation is the action or process of clearing of forests. Some consequences of this include a large contribution to global warming and climate change (about 1.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide each year), loss of biodiversity especially in tropical rainforests, and the extinction of many known or yet to be discovered species. But, through some Debt-for-Nature Swaps, leaving forests
The Amazon Rain Forest crosses several national boundaries in South America, although the majority of it is located in Brazil. It covers over 3,562,000 acres, making it the largest in the world. But globally, over 138,600 acres of rain forest are lost each year to deforestation, 50,000 of those in Brazil alone (Holdsforth), and the world's rain forests are quickly disappearing. Deforestation in the Amazon occurs primarily for three reasons: clear-cutting, fragmentation, and edge effects.
Countries such as Brazil and Indonesia have been greatly affected by deforestation with well over two million hectares of naturally forested land now rendered barren (See appendix 1).
Nowadays deforestation is the one of the most important and controversial environmental issues in the world. Deforestation is cutting down, clearing away or burning trees or forests. Particularly tropical rainforests are the most waning type of forests because of its location in developing countries such as Indonesia, the Philippines, India, central African countries and Brazil. Deforestation rate in those regions is high enough to worry about, because of large economic potential of forest areas. As the result of causes such as agriculture land expansion, logging for timber, fire blazing and settling infrastructure there might be serious impacts in future. For instance, extinction of endemic species of animals and plants which will be feral, increase of greenhouse gas emissions which may lead to global warming and consecutive catastrophes, destruction of home for indigenous residents which is considered as violation of human rights. Some people can argue with these drawbacks telling that deforestation have more valuable benefits such as growth of economics, production of food and providing better opportunities for life for poor families. However, these benefits are quite temporary and government of that countries and world organisations tries to halt deforestation proposing several solutions. Deforestation problem is especially acute in the Brazilian Amazon, where its rate is much high comparing with other regions. This paper will describe world-wide rainforests, causes and effects of deforestation, and evaluate possible solutions of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon.
Deforestation is a widely used term, but one with different meanings. Disturbance deforestation refers to all man made disturbances that alter a forest, these are the most common. This argumentative essay discusses the positive and negative aspects of deforestation. In the first part of the essay the pro arguments of deforestation will be discussed. For example, the issue of Global population and how forests are being used, land use and the ways forests contribute, wood use, forest growth, destruction and the reasons for cutting down the trees. The second half of the essay will cover the issues that are harmful to the environment because of deforestation. Many environmental issues take place everyday; a big question that arises, is if the global economy will ever finds middle on the issue of forest thinning. If deforestation was used only in the most crucial of times, the world might become a better place.
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.
Ever since then the deforestation for resources has dramatically increased to an alarming rate. Every second we lose an area of two football fields and every week an area twice as big as Rhode Island. The Rainforests once covered fourteen percent of the Earth compared to the two percent now. In the...
This is alarming since recent data indicates these enormous forests are land-dwelling carbon absorbers that could help to slow worldwide climate alteration. The United Nations ' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates “eighteen million acres of forests have been destroyed worldwide;” and NASA forecasts “that if current deforestation rates are not reduced, rainforests could become entirely eradicated in a century.” The nations with substantial deforestation are Brazil, Indonesia, Thailand, Africa (The Democratic Republic of Congo included), and remote areas of Eastern Europe. Indonesia, the country with the greatest deforestation within the last century, has lost approximately forty million acres of indigenous
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.