Tragedy of Deforestation

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Human activity can negatively impact on the environment in different ways, which can lead to consequences which are not only bad for the environmental area affected, but humans too. Activities such as causing radiation leaks with nuclear meltdowns and dumping waste are just some examples of how humans can worsen their own environment.

One environment damaging human activity in particular is deforestation. It is a significant problem in many parts of the world, with over four fifths of the worlds forest wiped out according to the World Resources Institute. So what are the main consequences which are caused by deforestation, and why does it happen?

A major result on the environment is the habitat destruction and endangerment of animals. Rainforests contain over half of the world’s plant and animal species, while making up 7 percent of the Earths land mass. They reside in ecosystems which have developed for hundreds of millions of years. Some species only live in certain microhabitats, making them ultra prone to quick extinction. When their habitat gets destroyed, entire animal populations can be wiped out from certain areas, although occasionally leaving portions of populations behind. Even then, the surviving pockets may suffer from decreased biodiversity or isolation from other pockets of the remaining population. This could disrupt the imperative food web in many ways, such as higher order consumers no longer finding prey or an inadequate amount of producers. The lack of abundance of one level of the food web would likely create a ‘shockwave’ effect causing problems through the food web. The canopy layer of a forest is vital to block out sunlight and retain heat, so its removal causes fluctuating temperatures which can be dange...

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...Lindsey | Tropical Deforestation | Format: NASA Publication | NASA Earth Observatory | Place Unspecified | 30/03/07 | Accessed 19/05/10, 20/05/10, 23/05/10, 24/05/10

http://www.illegal-logging.info/uploads/1_Illegal_logging_bp_07_01.pdf | Duncan Brack | Illegal Logging | Format: Information Article | Chatham House | UK | July 2007 | Accessed 22/05/10, 23/05/10

http://library.thinkquest.org/27257/rainforest.html | Author Unspecified | Species in the Rainforest | Format: Information Article | Thinkquest Library | Place Unspecified | Date Unspecified | Accessed 22/05/10, 23/05/10

http://www.umich.edu/~gs265/society/deforestation.htm | Jocelyn Stock and Andy Rochen | The Choice: Doomsday or Arbor Day | Format: Information Article | University of Michigan | Place Unspecified | Date Unspecified - Probably close to 2000 based on cited sources | Accessed 21/05/10, 23/05/10

Deforestation In Canada
1928 Words | 4 Pages
The main reason deforestation happens, is because of farming. They need to clear out land in order to plant crops and vegetables. Another loss from deforestation is that many animals lose their habitat. The loss of animals habitats will lead to migration, or possibly even extinction. And when this happens this will ruin the food chains which will affect even more animals.
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Deforestation In The Amazon Rainforest
958 Words | 2 Pages
The Amazon Rain Forest Is in Danger of Being Destroyed" by Devadas Vittal. Rain Forests. HaiSong Harvey, Ed. At Issue Series. Greenhaven Press, 2002. Reprinted from Devadas Vittal, Introduction: What Is the Amazon Rainforest? Internet: http://www.homepages.go.com/homepages/d/v/i/dvittal/amazon/intro.html, November 1999, by permission of the author. http://ic.galegroup.com/ic/ovic/ViewpointsDetailsPage/ViewpointsDetailsWindow?displayGroupName=Viewpoints&disableHighlighting=false&prodId=OVIC&action=e&windowstate=normal&catId=&documentId=GALE%7CEJ3010021212&mode=view
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Impacts of the Human Ecological Footprint
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Overall, humans impact the global environment in multitudinous ways whether positive or negative. While creating issues such as overpopulation, pollution, biomagnification, and deforestation they also intrude into many other factors such as environmental, social, political, and economic. Problems caused by society itself are leading up to solutions to fix these environmental problems and may also just benefit the world as a whole.
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Persuasive Essay On Deforestation
765 Words | 2 Pages
“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
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Should Land Clearing in Australia Continue?
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Philip, M., & William F. 2004, ‘Tropical Deforestation and Greenhouse-gas Emissions’, Ecological Applications, (no publication information), Volume 14, Issue 4, pp. 982–986, viewed 23 April 2010,
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Hydrologic cycle of the Panamanian rainforest and Mojave desert
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Moeller, Karla (2013, July 24). Revealing the Rainforest. ASU - Ask A Biologist. Retrieved November 29, 2013 from http://askabiologist.asu.edu/explore/rainforest
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WPF/World Preservation Foundation, 2010, Deforestation statistics, sponsored by WPF, viewed 3rd November 2013, Available at: http://www.worldpreservationfoundation.org/blog/news/deforestation-statistics/#.UoFtypQY3TV
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The Controversy of Deforestation
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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.
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Deforestation Essay
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The FAO report does not compile statistics for tropical forest regions as a whole, but the country-by-country and regional-scale statistics provide a grim picture. The scope and impact of deforestation can be viewed in different ways. One is in absolute numbers: total area of forest cleared over a certain period. By that metric, all three major tropical forest areas, including South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia, are represented near the top of the list. Brazil led the world in terms of total deforested area between 1990 and 2005. The country lost 42,330,000 hectares (163,436 square miles) of forest, roughly the size of California. Rounding out the top five tropical countries with the greatest total area of deforestation were Indonesia, Sudan, Myanmar, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
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Lindsey, Rebecca. "Tropical Deforestation : Feature Articles." Tropical Deforestation : Feature Articles. NASA, 30 Mar. 2007. Web. 01 Mar. 2014. .
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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...
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Deforestation Essay
1140 Words | 3 Pages
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
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Some effects of deforestation are that, according to Source 4, the cutting down of trees is adding to global warming as trees take in carbon dioxide produced by humans and give out oxygen for us to breathe. Burning trees also produces greenhouse gases which are released into the atmosphere. With less trees, there will be more carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere which will lead to more heat being trapped, heating up the planet further - resulting in the ice caps melting and animals like the Polar Bear going extinct.
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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...
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Cause-Effect Essay: Deforestation
1146 Words | 3 Pages
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.
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Tragedy of Deforestation

Deforestation In Canada

Deforestation In The Amazon Rainforest

Impacts of the Human Ecological Footprint

Persuasive Essay On Deforestation

Should Land Clearing in Australia Continue?

Hydrologic cycle of the Panamanian rainforest and Mojave desert