Forest Health & Deforestation

Deforestation is the conversion of forested areas to non-forested land, for uses such as: pasture, urban use, logging purposes, and can result in arid land and wastelands. In many countries, deforestation is ongoing and is shaping climate and geography. Deforestation results from removal of trees without sufficient reforestation, and results in declines in habitat and biodiversity, wood for fuel and industrial use, and quality of life. Forests disappear naturally as a result of broad climate change, fire, hurricanes or other disturbances, however most deforestation in the past 40,000 years has been anthropogenic. Human induced deforestation may be accidental such as in the case of forests in Europe adversely affected by acid rain. Improperly applied logging, fuelwood collection, fire management or grazing can also lead to unintentional deforestation. However, most anthropogenic deforestation is deliberate. The scale of deforestation can be observed with the satellite viewing program Google Earth. Are you searching for cars from Hamburg Airport? We will take you to the right place: Autovermietung Hamburg Flughafen

The consequences of deforestation are largely unknown and the impacts not verified by sufficient scientific data leading to considerable debate amongst scientists.

In simple terms deforestation occurs because forested land is not economically viable. Increasing the amount of farmland, wood extraction and, infrastructure expansion are all important factors in driving deforestation in different regions with mining also an important cause. There is considerable interplay between these factors. For example logging(wood extraction) or mining requires roads to transport the timber(infrastructure expansion) and farmers use these roads to move into previously unreachable areas of forest (agricultural expansion). The ultimate cause of most deforestation is increased food production. Cattle, permanent crops, shifting cultivation and colonization are all equally important to global tropical deforestation,

Forested land cannot produce as much food as cleared land. At the extreme, rain forests can not support human populations at all because the food resources are too scattered. However even in open forest and woodland communities food production can be increased by orders of magnitude when trees are removed. The planet could not support current population and current living standards if deforestation had never occurred. Cattle, permanent crops, shifting cultivation and colonization are all equally important causes of global tropical deforestation. Slash-and-burn is a method sometimes used by shifting cultivators to create short term yields from marginal soils. When practiced repeatedly, or without intervening fallow periods, the nutrient poor soils may be exhausted or eroded to an unproductive state. Slash-and-burn techniques are used by native populations of over 200 million people worldwide.

The presumed value of forests as a genetic resources has never been confirmed by any economic studies. As a result owners of forested land lose money by not clearing the forest and this affects the welfare of the whole society. From the perspective of the developing world, the benefits of forest as carbon sinks or biodiversity reserves go primarily to richer developed nations and there is insufficient compensation for these services. As a result some countries simply have too much forest. Developing countries feel that some countries in the developed world, such as the United States of America, cut down their forests centuries ago and benefited greatly from this deforestation and that it is hypocritical to deny developing countries the same opportunities: that the poor shouldn’t have to bear the cost of preservation when the rich created the problem.

Aside from a general agreement that deforestation occurs to increase the economic value of the land there is no agreement on what causes deforestation. Logging may be a direct source of deforestation in some areas and have no effect or be at worst an indirect source in others due to logging roads enabling easier access for farmers wanting to clear the forest: experts do not agree on whether logging is an important contributor to global deforestation and some believe that logging makes considerable contribution to reducing deforestation because in developing countries logging reserves are far larger than nature reserves. Similarly there is no consensus on whether poverty is important in deforestation. Some argue that poor people are more likely to clear forest because they have no alternatives, others that the poor lack the ability to pay for the materials and labour needed to clear forest. Claims that that population growth drives deforestation is weak and based on flawed data. with population increase due to high fertility rates being a primary driver of tropical deforestation in only 8% of cases. The FAO states that the global deforestation rate is unrelated to human population growth rate, rather it is the result of lack of technological advancement and inefficient governance. There are many causes at the root of deforestation, such as the corruption and inequitable distribution of wealth and power, population growth and overpopulation, and urbanization. Globalization is often viewed as a driver of deforestation.

According to British environmentalist Norman Myers, 5% of deforestation is due to cattle ranching, 19% to over-heavy logging, 22% due to the growing sector of palm oil plantations, and 54% due to slash-and-burn farming.