Jordan L.

Barcelo BSCRIM 1-C

Deforestation

is the permanent removal of trees to make room for something besides forest. This can include clearing
the land for agriculture or grazing, or using the timber for fuel, construction or manufacturing.

Forests cover more than 30% of the Earth's land surface, according to the World Wildlife Fund. These
forested areas can provide food, medicine and fuel for more than a billion people. Worldwide, forests
provide 13.4 million people with jobs in the forest sector, and another 41 million people have jobs
related to forests.

Forests are a resource, but they are also large, undeveloped swaths of land that can be converted for
purposes such as agriculture and grazing. In North America, about half the forests in the eastern part of
the continent were cut down for timber and farming between the 1600s and late 1800s, according to
National Geographic.

Today, most deforestation is happening in the tropics. Areas that were inaccessible in the past are now
within reach as new roads are constructed through the dense forests. A 2017 report by scientists at the
University of Maryland showed that the tropics lost about 61,000 square miles (158,000 square
kilometers) of forest in 2017 — an area the size of Bangladesh.

Reasons forests are destroyed

The World Bank estimates that about 3.9 million square miles (10 million square km) of forest have been
lost since the beginning of the 20th century. In the past 25 years, forests shrank by 502,000 square miles
(1.3 million square km) — an area bigger than the size of South Africa. In 2018, The Guardian reported
that every second, a chunk of forest equivalent to the size of a soccer field is lost.

Often, deforestation occurs when forested area is cut and cleared to make way for agriculture or
grazing. The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) reports that just four commodities are responsible for
tropical deforestation: beef, soy, palm oil and wood products. UCS estimates that an area the size of
Switzerland (14,800 square miles, or 38,300 square km) is lost to deforestation every year.
Natural fires in tropical forests tend to be rare but intense. Human-lit fires are commonly used to clear
land for agricultural use. First, valuable timber is harvested, then the remaining vegetation is burned to
make way for crops like soy or cattle grazing. In 2019, the number of human-lit fires in Brazil
skyrocketed. As of August 2019, more than 80,000 fires burned in the Amazon, an increase of almost
80% from 2018, National Geographic reported.

Many forests are cleared to make way for palm oil plantations. Palm oil is the most commonly produced
vegetable oil and is found in half of all supermarket products. It's cheap, versatile and can be added to
both food and personal products like lipsticks and shampoo. Its popularity has spurred people to clear
tropical forests to grow more palm trees. Growing the trees that produce the oil requires the leveling of
native forest and the destruction of local peatlands — which doubles the harmful effect on the
ecosystem. According to a report published by Zion Market Research, the global palm oil market was
valued at $65.73 billion in 2015 and is expected to reach $92.84 billion in 2021.

A palm tree farm planted where there was once a rainforest. (Image credit: Shutterstock)

Effects of deforestation

Forests can be found from the tropics to high-latitude areas. They are home to 80% of terrestrial
biodiversity, containing a wide array of trees, plants, animals and microbes, according to the World
Bank, an international financial institution. Some places are especially diverse — the tropical forests of
New Guinea, for example, contain more than 6% of the world's species of plants and animals.

Forests provide more than a home for a diverse collection of living things; they are also an important
resource for many around the world. In countries like Uganda, people rely on trees for firewood, timber
and charcoal. Over the past 25 years, Uganda has lost 63% of its forest cover, Reuters reported. Families
send children — primarily girls — to collect firewood, and kids have to trek farther and farther to get to
the trees. Collecting enough wood often takes all day, so the children miss school.

According to a 2018 FAO report, three-quarters of the Earth’s freshwater comes from forested
watersheds, and the loss of trees can affect water quality. The UN's 2018 State of the World's Forests
report found that over half the global population relies on forested watersheds for their drinking water
as well as water used for agriculture and industry.

Deforestation in tropical regions can also affect the way water vapor is produced over the canopy, which
causes reduced rainfall. A 2019 study published in the journal Ecohydrology showed that parts of the
Amazon rainforest that were converted to agricultural land had higher soil and air temperatures, which
can exacerbate drought conditions. In comparison, forested land had rates of evapotranspiration that
were about three times higher, adding more water vapor to the air.

Trees also absorb carbon dioxide, mitigating greenhouse gas emissions produced by human activity. As
climate change continues, trees play an important role in carbon sequestration, or the capture and
storage of excess carbon dioxide. Tropical trees alone are estimated to provide about 23% of the climate
mitigation that's needed to offset climate change, according to the World Resources Institute, a
nonprofit global research institute.

Deforestation not only removes vegetation that is important for removing carbon dioxide from the air,
but the act of clearing the forests also produces greenhouse gas emissions. The Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations says that deforestation is the second-leading cause of climate
change. (The first is the burning of fossil fuels.) In fact, deforestation accounts for nearly 20% of
greenhouse gas emissions.

Not only does deforestation remove trees that sequester greenhouse gases, but it also produces a
significant amount of greenhouse gases in the process. (Image credit: Shutterstock)

Deforestation solutions

Developing alternatives to deforestation can help decrease the need for tree clearing. For example, the
desire to expand the amount of land used for agriculture is an attractive reason to deforest an area. But
if people adopted sustainable farming practices or employed new farming technologies and crops, the
need for more land might be diminished, according to the UN's Sustainable Forest Management
Toolbox.
Forests can also be restored, through replanting trees in cleared areas or simply allowing the forest
ecosystem to regenerate over time. The goal of restoration is to return the forest to its original state,
before it was cleared, according to the U.S. Forest Service. The sooner a cleared area is reforested, the
quicker the ecosystem can start to repair itself. Afterward, wildlife will return, water systems will
reestablish, carbon will be sequestered and soils will be replenished.

Everyone can do their part to curb deforestation. We can buy certified wood products, go paperless
whenever possible, limit our consumption of products that use palm oil and plant a tree when possible.

Deforestation, the clearing or thinning of forests by humans. Deforestation represents one of the largest
issues in global land use. Estimates of deforestation traditionally are based on the area of forest cleared
for human use, including removal of the trees for wood products and for croplands and grazing lands. In
the practice of clear-cutting, all the trees are removed from the land, which completely destroys the
forest. In some cases, however, even partial logging and accidental fires thin out the trees enough to
change the forest structure dramatically.

ARTICLE CONTENTS

Deforestation, the clearing or thinning of forests by humans. Deforestation represents one of the largest
issues in global land use. Estimates of deforestation traditionally are based on the area of forest cleared
for human use, including removal of the trees for wood products and for croplands and grazing lands. In
the practice of clear-cutting, all the trees are removed from the land, which completely destroys the
forest. In some cases, however, even partial logging and accidental fires thin out the trees enough to
change the forest structure dramatically.

deforestation

Deforestation

History

Conversion of forests to land used for other purposes has a long history. Earth’s croplands, which cover
about 49 million square km (18.9 million square miles), are mostly deforested land. Most present-day
croplands receive enough rain and are warm enough to have once supported forests of one kind or
another. Only about 1 million square km (390,000 square miles) of cropland are in areas that would have
been cool boreal forests, as in Scandinavia and northern Canada. Much of the remainder was once moist
subtropical or tropical forest or, in eastern North America, western Europe, and eastern China,
temperate forest.

The extent to which forests have become Earth’s grazing lands is much more difficult to assess. Cattle or
sheep pastures in North America or Europe are easy to identify, and they support large numbers of
animals. At least 2 million square km (772,204 square miles) of such forests have been cleared for
grazing lands. Less certain are the humid tropical forests and some drier tropical woodlands that have
been cleared for grazing. These often support only very low numbers of domestic grazing animals, but
they may still be considered grazing lands by national authorities. Almost half the world is made up of
“drylands”—areas too dry to support large numbers of trees—and most are considered grazing lands.
There, goats, sheep, and cattle may harm what few trees are able to grow.

Although most of the areas cleared for crops and grazing represent permanent and continuing
deforestation, deforestation can be transient. About half of eastern North America lay deforested in the
1870s, almost all of it having been deforested at least once since European colonization in the early
1600s. Since the 1870s the region’s forest cover has increased, though most of the trees are relatively
young. Few places exist in eastern North America that retain stands of uncut old-growth forests.

Modern Deforestation

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that the annual rate of
deforestation is about 1.3 million square km per decade, though the rate has slowed in some places in
the early 21st century as a result of enhanced forest management practices and the establishment of
nature preserves. The greatest deforestation is occurring in the tropics, where a wide variety of forests
exists. They range from rainforests that are hot and wet year-round to forests that are merely humid
and moist, to those in which trees in varying proportions lose their leaves in the dry season, and to dry
open woodlands. Because boundaries between these categories are inevitably arbitrary, estimates differ
regarding how much deforestation has occurred in the tropics.

Deforested lands are being replanted in some areas. Some of this replanting is done to replenish logging
areas for future exploitation, and some replanting is done as a form of ecological restoration, with the
reforested areas made into protected land. Additionally, significant areas are planted as monotypic
plantations for lumber or paper production. These are often plantations of eucalyptus or fast-growing
pines—and almost always of species that are not native to the places where they are planted. The FAO
estimates that there are approximately 1.3 million square km (500,000 square miles) of such plantations
on Earth.
Many replanting efforts are led and funded by the United Nations and nongovernmental organizations.
However, some national governments have also undertaken ambitious replanting projects. For example,
starting in 2017, the government of New Zealand sought to plant more than 100 million trees per year
within its borders, but perhaps the most ambitious replanting project took place in India on a single day
in 2017, when citizens planted some 66 million trees.

Effects

Deforestation has important global consequences. Forests sequester carbon in the form of wood and
other biomass as the trees grow, taking up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (see carbon cycle).
When forests are burned, their carbon is returned to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, a greenhouse
gas that has the potential to alter global climate (see greenhouse effect; global warming), and the trees
are no longer present to sequester more carbon.