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Deforestation

Deforestation is clearing the world's forests at an unsustainable rate, resulting in damage to the land and loss of habitat. Forests cover 30% of the world's land but swaths the size of Panama are lost each year, and at the current rate the rainforests could disappear in 100 years. The largest drivers of deforestation are agriculture, logging, and urban sprawl. Deforestation has negative environmental impacts like climate change and loss of biodiversity as it removes trees that absorb carbon and supports millions of species. More sustainable forest management through eliminating clear-cutting and balancing cutting with replanting is a better solution than simply stopping deforestation.

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297 views

Deforestation

Deforestation is clearing the world's forests at an unsustainable rate, resulting in damage to the land and loss of habitat. Forests cover 30% of the world's land but swaths the size of Panama are lost each year, and at the current rate the rainforests could disappear in 100 years. The largest drivers of deforestation are agriculture, logging, and urban sprawl. Deforestation has negative environmental impacts like climate change and loss of biodiversity as it removes trees that absorb carbon and supports millions of species. More sustainable forest management through eliminating clear-cutting and balancing cutting with replanting is a better solution than simply stopping deforestation.

Uploaded by

ellazairie
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Deforestation is clearing Earth's forests on a massive scale, often resulting in damage to the quality of the land.

Forests still cover about 30 percent of the worlds land area, but swaths the size of Panama are lost each and every year. The worlds rain forests could completely vanish in a hundred years at the current rate of deforestation. Forests are cut down for many reasons, but most of them are related to money or to peoples need to provide for their families.The biggest driver of deforestation is agriculture. Farmers cut forests to provide more room for planting crops or grazing livestock. Often many small farmers will each clear a few acres to feed their families by cutting down trees and burning them in a process known as slash and burn agriculture. Logging operations, which provide the worlds wood and paper products, also cut countless trees each year. Loggers, some of them acting illegally, also build roads to access more and more remote forestswhich leads to further deforestation. Forests are also cut as a result of growing urban sprawl. Not all deforestation is intentional. Some is caused by a combination of human and natural factors like wildfires and subsequent overgrazing, which may prevent the growth of young trees. Deforestation has many negative effects on the environment. The most dramatic impact is a loss of habitat for millions of species. Seventy percent of Earths land animals and plants live in forests, and many cannot survive the deforestation that destroys their homes. Deforestation also drives climate change. Forest soils are moist, but without protection from sun-blocking tree cover they quickly dry out. Trees also help perpetuate the water cycle by returning water vapor back into the atmosphere. Without trees to fill these roles, many former forest lands can quickly become barren deserts. Removing trees deprives the forest of portions of its canopy, which blocks the suns rays during the day and holds in heat at night. This disruption leads to more extreme temperatures swings that can be harmful to plants and animals. Trees also play a critical role in absorbing the greenhouse gases that fuel global warming. Fewer forests means larger amounts of greenhouse gases entering the atmosphereand increased speed and severity of global warming. The quickest solution to deforestation would be to simply stop cutting down trees. Though deforestation rates have slowed a bit in recent years, financial realities make this unlikely to occur. A more workable solution is to carefully manage forest resources by eliminating clear-cutting to make sure that forest environments remain intact. The cutting that does occur should be balanced by the planting of enough young trees to replace

the older ones felled in any given forest. The number of new tree plantations is growing each year, but their total still equals a tiny fraction of the Earths forested land.

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