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 world's land area, but swaths the size of Panama are lost each and every year.
The world's 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 people's 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 world's 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 forests-which leads to further deforestation. Forests are also cut as a result of growing urban sprawl.
ILLEGAL LOGGING:
National laws regulate the production and trade of timber products at all stages, from harvesting to processing to sales. These laws can be violated in any number of ways, such as taking wood from protected areas, harvesting more than is permitted and harvesting protected species. Illegal logging occurs around the world. and in some places, illegal logging is more common than the legal variety. This destruction threatens some of the world most famous and valuable forests, including rainforests in the Amazon, Congo Basin, Indonesia and the forests of the Russian Far East. Illegal logging also depresses the price of timber worldwide, disadvantaging law-abiding companies, and depriving governments of revenues normally generated by duties and taxes. Poor communities near forests are often vulnerable when outsiders try to gain control over the timber nearby, which can lead to repression and human rights violations.
FOREST FIRES:
Fires are a natural and beneficial element of many forest landscapes, but they are problematic when they occur in the wrong place, at the wrong frequency or at the wrong severity. Each year, millions of acres of forest around the world are destroyed or degraded by fire. The same amount is lost to logging and agriculture combined. Fire is often used as a way to clear land for other uses such as planting crops. These fires not only alter the structure and composition of forests, but they can open up forests to invasive species, threaten biologicaldiversity, alter water cycles and soil fertility, and destroy the livelihoods of the people who live in and around the forests.
OCCURRENCE:
Deforestation can happen quickly, such as when a fire sweeps through the landscape or the forest is clear-cut to make way for an oil palm plantation. It can also happen gradually as a result of ongoing forest degradation as temperatures rise due to climate change caused by human activity. While deforestation appears to be on the decline in some countries, it remains disturbingly high in others-including Brazil and Indonesia-and a grave threat to our world's most valuable forests still remains.
NATURAL HOMES:
Forests are more than just a collection of trees-they are integrated ecosystems and home to some of the most diverse life on Earth. Forest also provide protection for many animals from predators. They are also major players in the carbon and water cycles that make life possible. When forests are lost or degraded, their destruction sets off a series of changes that affect life both locally and around the world. Some of these changes come be in home, wildlife, and economical changes.
INCREASED SOIL EROSION:Without trees to anchor fertile soil, erosion can occur and sweep the land into rivers. The agricultural plants that often replace the trees cannot hold onto the soil. Many of these plants-such as coffee, cotton, palm oil, soybean and wheat-can actually exacerbate soil erosion. Scientists have estimated that a third of the world's arable land has been lost through soil erosion and other types of degradation since 1960. And as fertile soil washes away, agricultural producers move on, clearing more forest and continuing the cycle of soil loss.
WATER CYCLE:When forests are destroyed, the atmosphere, water bodies and the water table are all affected. Trees absorb and retain water in their roots. A large part of the water that circulates in the ecosystem of rainforests remains inside the plants. Some of this moisture is transpired into the atmosphere. When this process is broken, the atmosphere and water bodies begin to dry out. The watershed potential is compromised and less water will run through the rivers. Smaller lakes and streams that take water from these larger water bodies dry up.
LOSS OF BIODIVERSITY:Many wonderful species of plants and animals have been lost, and many others remain endangered. More than 80% of the world's species remain in the Tropical Rainforest. It is estimated that about 50 to 100 species of animals are being lost each day as a result of destruction of their habitats, and that is a tragedy.
Removing trees deprives the forest of portions of its canopy, which blocks the sun's rays during the day and holds in heat at night. This disruption leads to more extreme temperatures swings th2t can be harmful to plants and animals.
LOSS OF HABITAT:One of the most dangerous and unsettling effects of deforestation is the loss of animal and plant species due to their loss of habita; not only do we lose those known to us, but also those unknown, potentially an even greater loss."Seventy percent of Earth's land animals and plants live in forests, and many cannot survive the deforestation that destroys their homes." The trees of the rainforest that provide shelter for some species also provide the canopy that regulates the temperature, a necessity for many others. Its removal through deforestation would allow a more drastic temperature variation from day to night, much like a desert, which could prove fatal for current inhabitants.
CHANCE FOR EXTINCTION:When species lose their natural habitat to deforestation and other causes, they don't immediately disappear. Instead, they gradually die off over several generations, racking up an "extinction debt" that must eventually be paid in full. New research shows that the Brazilian Amazon has accrued a heavy vertebrate extinction debt, with more than 80 percent of extinctions expected from historical deforestation still impending.While the results are alarming, this deathly time lag provides a conservation opportunity to save some of the disappearing species, scientists said, stressing that actions taken in the next few years are critical.
