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. The
world’s rain forests could completely vanish in a hundred years at the current
rate of deforestation. Examples of deforestation include conversion of
forestland to farms, ranches, or urban use.Deforestation occurs for many
reasons: trees are cut down to be used or sold as fuel or timber, while cleared
land is used as pasture for livestock, plantations of commodities and
settlements.
By most accounts, deforestation in tropical rainforests adds more carbon dioxide
to the atmosphere than the sum total of cars and trucks on the world’s roads.
According to the World Carfree Network (WCN), cars and trucks account for about
14 percent of global carbon emissions, while most analysts attribute upwards of
15 percent to deforestation.
The removal of trees without sufficient reforestation has resulted in damage to
habitat, biodiversity loss and aridity. Disregard or ignorance of intrinsic
value, lack of ascribed value, lax forest management and deficient environmental
laws are some of the factors that allow deforestation to occur on a large scale.
In many countries, deforestation, both naturally occurring and human induced, is
an ongoing issue.
Deforestation has many negative effects on the environment. The most dramatic
impact is a loss of habitat for millions of species. Seventy percent of Earth’s
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
sun’s 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.
The quickest solution to deforestation would be to simply stop cutting down
trees. 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 Earth’s forested land.