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Deforestation: Forests
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Deforestation is the process of changing land use from forests to a non-forest use. Western Europe has already lost over 99% of its primary forest. Today, deforestation programmes focus on the major rainforests of the tropics. Current tropical tree planting programmes are not keeping pace with this rate of deforestation. Countries in these areas are often under-developed and striving for economic improvement. Sales of timber and the use of land for crops provide monetary benefits.
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Deforestation is a major problem throughout the tropics. Uncontrolled harvesting of trees, especially hardwoods still goes on. Subsistence farming is practiced by millions of people who farm the land by burning a part of the forest and planting crops in the seemingly rich soil. The problem is that despite the lush appearance of the forest, the underlying soil is not that fertile. Its fertility is not inherent but comes from a complex interaction of the plants, trees, bacteria and insects that live only in the forest. After burning the forest, crops can only be grown for a couple of years before the soil is depleted and the farmer moves on to burn another section of forest. He leaves behind a dead space directly exposed to the burning sun and torrential rain.
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Deforestation is occurring around the world at an unprecedented pace. Throughout the forests of virtually every continent, people are destroying valuable forests either for purposes of living or trade. International trade and the build up of the industrial complex are causing rapid deforestation. With the recent discovery of the damage to the ozone layer, numerous world wide organizations and governments have taken strides to reduce the actions of humans that damage, not only the ozone, but the environment. Deforestation is a vast and widespread phenomenon. As can be seen in this case analysis, the examples of deforestation are not limited to one geographic region or one set of cultures, but instead are a shared problem of the global community.
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Deforestation is the loss or continual degradation of forest habitat primarily due to human related causes. Agriculture, urban sprawl, unsustainable forestry practices, mining, and petroleum exploration all contribute to human caused deforestation. Natural deforestation can be linked to tsunamis, forest fires, volcanic eruptions, glaciation and desertification, although the desertification process is driven primarily by human causes. The effects of human related deforestation can be mitigated through environmentally sustainable practices that reduce permanent destruction of forests or even act to preserve and rehabilitate disrupted forestland (see Reforestation and Treeplanting).
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Deforestation is the removal of trees, often as a result of human activities. Deforestation has been practiced by humans for thousands of years chiefly as a result of clearing land for commercial and industrial development, intensive collection of firewood, clearing of land for growing crops and to develop pasture for grazing animals. The rate of clearance increased during the second half of the 19th century due to agricultural expansion in Europe. There has been massive increases since then. Currently major worries concern the loss of tropical rainforest, one fifth of which was destroyed between 1960 and 1990. 12 million hectares of tropical forest are lost each year, an area approximately the size of England.
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Deforestation can alter local and regional climates because evaporation of water from leaves makes up as much as two-thirds of the rain that falls in some forest. Without trees to hold back surface runoff and block wind, available moisture is quickly drained away and winds dry the soil, sometimes resulting in desert-like conditions. Another potential effect on climate is the large scale release into the atmosphere of carbon dioxide stored as organic carbon in forests and forest soils. In 1980, tropical deforestation released between 0.4 and 1.6 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere, an amount equal to 10–40% of that from fossil fuels.
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