Deforestation

Deforestation of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil's Maranhão state, 2016
Deforestation in Riau province, Sumatra, Indonesia to make way for an oil palm plantation in 2007.
Deforestation in the city of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil's Rio de Janeiro state, 2009

Deforestation or forest clearance is the removal and destruction of a forest or stand of trees from land that is then converted to non-forest use.[1] Deforestation can involve conversion of forest land to farms, ranches, or urban use. The most concentrated deforestation occurs in tropical rainforests.[2] About 31% of Earth's land surface is covered by forests at present.[3] This is one-third less than the forest cover before the expansion of agriculture, with half of that loss occurring in the last century.[4] Between 15 million to 18 million hectares of forest, an area the size of Bangladesh, are destroyed every year. On average 2,400 trees are cut down each minute.[5]

The overwhelming direct cause of deforestation is agriculture.[6] More than 80% of deforestation was attributed to agriculture in 2018.[7] Forests are being converted to plantations for coffee, tea, palm oil, rice, rubber, and various other popular products.[8] Livestock ranching is another agricultural activity that drives deforestation. Further drivers are the wood industry (logging), economic development in general (for example urbanization), mining. The effects of climate change are another cause via the increased risk of wildfires.

Deforestation has resulted in habitat destruction, biodiversity loss, and aridity. Deforestation also causes extinction, changes to climatic conditions, desertification, and displacement of populations, as observed by current conditions and in the past through the fossil record.[9] Deforestation also reduces biosequestration of atmospheric carbon dioxide, increasing negative feedback cycles contributing to global warming. Global warming also puts increased pressure on communities who seek food security by clearing forests for agricultural use and reducing arable land more generally. Deforested regions typically incur significant other environmental effects such as adverse soil erosion and degradation into wasteland.

The resilience of human food systems and their capacity to adapt to future change is linked to biodiversity – including dryland-adapted shrub and tree species that help combat desertification, forest-dwelling insects, bats and bird species that pollinate crops, trees with extensive root systems in mountain ecosystems that prevent soil erosion, and mangrove species that provide resilience against flooding in coastal areas.[10] With climate change exacerbating the risks to food systems, the role of forests in capturing and storing carbon and mitigating climate change is important for the agricultural sector.[10]

  1. ^ SAFnet Dictionary|Definition For [deforestation] Archived 25 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine. Dictionary of forestry.org (29 July 2008). Retrieved 15 May 2011.
  2. ^ Bradford, Alina. (4 March 2015) Deforestation: Facts, Causes & Effects. Live Science. Retrieved 13 November 2016.
  3. ^ Deforestation | Threats | WWF. Worldwildlife.org. Retrieved 13 November 2016.
  4. ^ Ritchie, Hannah; Roser, Max (9 February 2021). "Forests and Deforestation". Our World in Data.
  5. ^ "On Water". European Investment Bank. Retrieved 13 October 2020.
  6. ^ Cite error: The named reference UNFCC-2007 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^ Cite error: The named reference ScienceDaily-2018 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  8. ^ Cite error: The named reference WWF-2020 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  9. ^ Sahney, S.; Benton, M.J. & Falcon-Lang, H.J. (2010). "Rainforest collapse triggered Pennsylvanian tetrapod diversification in Euramerica". Geology. 38 (12): 1079–1082. Bibcode:2010Geo....38.1079S. doi:10.1130/G31182.1.
  10. ^ a b The State of the World's Forests 2020. Forests, biodiversity and people – In brief. Rome: FAO & UNEP. 2020. doi:10.4060/ca8985en. ISBN 978-92-5-132707-4. S2CID 241416114.

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