Deforestation
Earth without forests is a picture that most of humankind presently could not conceive. Forests cover much of the planet's land area. They are extremely important to humans and the natural world. However, deforestation has been consuming our forests. Deforestation brings about a lot of unexpected effects on the earth and results in many negative consequences. "If the current rate of deforestation continues, the world's rain forests will vanish within 100 years-causing unknown effects on global climate and eliminating the majority of plant and animal species on the planet," according to NASA's Earth Observatory. Deforestation increases the greenhouse effect and accelerates global warming. It also causes erosion, and the silting of lakes or rivers is caused by soil erosion. The same source claims that deforestation is very hard to be stopped because "the causes of deforestation are very complex." There are several reasons why this current trend exists.Deforestation occurs in many ways. People destroy or degrade forests because, for them, the benefits seem to outweigh the costs. Underlying causes include such issues as poverty, unequal land ownership, women's status, education and the explosive growth of the population. Immediate c
auses are often concerned with a search for land and resources, including both commercial timber and fuelwood. More important than that, commercial logging is considered as the major direct cause of deforestation. NASA's Earth Observatory asserts that "logging can occur selectively-where only the economically valuable species are cut-or by clearcutting, where all the trees are cut." The forces of large global markets for wood and wood products drive the scale of logging activities. Logging in the tropics does not in any way resemble scientific forestry and is often characterized by a "cut-and-get-out" mentality in logging companies. Forestry uses science and management skills to manipulate the natural vegetation to favor the long term production of a selected number of goods and services. In contrast, most tropical logging involves the short term exploitation of only industrial wood products with no eye to the future of the forests. The intensity of logging in Asia's forests is much higher than in the forests found in America or Europe. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates: "About half the land area of South America and Europe is covered by forest, but only one-sixth of Asia's land is forested." And "a study in Indonesia found that when only 3% of the trees were cut, a logging operation
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Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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