Being a concerned individual to our Mother Earth, one thing that I found to be the most interesting topic is about deforestation. Deforestation is one of the major impacts on the water cycle in local and global climates change. The long-term or permanent loss of forest covers when trees are removed to clear land for another use. The removal of trees in an area affects the weather in another area; if trees are cut down, less water evaporates in the atmosphere and less rain, as well. The functions of the trees are to absorb carbon emissions and greenhouse gases. It produces oxygen and perpetuates the water cycle, releases water vapor in the atmosphere. It only implies that without trees, forestlands become barren lands quickly. The land becomes drier and less stable at a local level. When it rains, there is increased leaching and run-off. Land areas are prone to droughts and floods affecting plants and animals, and humans.
In some way, deforestation is a significant form of environmental degradation. This environmental degradation has reasons that need a thorough investigation; deforestation has its causes of variety interrelated activities in some less developed countries that are linked to the consumptions of materials by the population in the well-developed countries. Most forested regions provide a household fuel for the agrarian communities that involved in the countless activities. It demonstrates the deforestation happens all over the world especially in tropical rainforests is the target in particular. As per data from the GRID-Arendal, a UN environment program, the current and recent past countries with significant deforestation are Indonesia, Brazil, Democratic Republic of Congo, and other parts of Africa, and in the Eastern Europe. In the last 50 years, the rapid increased of deforestation is a practice all through the history of human kind. In the 1600s, there is a removal of about 90 percent of the United States’ continental indigenous forest. It is estimated that about 22 percent of the original amount of most part of the Earth’s indigenous forest has remained intact particularly in Alaska, Russia, Northwestern Amazon (highly targeted area recently), and Canada. Deforestation has a direct potential to affect the quality of living for human populations; however, disrupting seriously the ecological systems that threatens the biodiversity. In addition, deforestation contributes to global warming, one of the serious problem of all humans on earth.
Forests are important to the carbon and water cycles that sustain life on earth and are complex ecosystems. When degraded, it can cause devastating chain of events locally and all over the world. The effects of deforestation are loss of species, carbon emissions, water cycle, soil erosion, and life quality. The loss of habitats of plants and animals that lives in the forest can lead to extinction of species, a biodiversity tragedy, and a negative result for medicinal research. There is more carbon and greenhouse gasses enter in the atmosphere if there are fewer trees, and trees are significant in the water cycle. Deforestation can lead to increase flood and in ability in farming, and soil erosion can lead to silt that enter in streams, lakes, and other sources of water that decreases the local water supply quality that contributes poor health in the community. Local economy is adversely affected, leading the people to migrate in cities, and then work on a plantation that worsen the issue in deforestation as an inhumane act of some individuals.
Reference
Jorgenson, A. K. (2006). Unequal Ecological Exchange and Environmental Degradation: A
Theoretical Proposition and Cross-National Study of Deforestation, 1990-2000. Rural Sociology , 71 (4), 685-712. Retrieved from http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=9&sid=0920f9cd-3a05-4f4c-acee-3a44f5433b30%40sessionmgr4001&hid=4106&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=a9h&AN=23181131.
Szalay, J. (2013. Retrieved from http://www.livescience.com/27692-deforestation.html, March
6). Deforestation: Facts, Causes & Effects.
