CAUSES OF DEFORESTATION

CAUSES OF DEFORESTATION

Deforestation is the permanent destruction of forests in order to make the land available for other uses

CAUSES

There are many causes of deforestation. The WWF reports that half of the trees illegally removed from forests are used as fuel.

Forests are cut down for many reasons, but most of them are related to money or to people’s need to provide for their families. The biggest driver of deforestation is agriculture. Farmers cut forests to provide more room for planting crops or grazing livestock. Often many small farmers will each clear a few acres to feed their families by cutting down trees and burning them in a process known as “slash and burn” agriculture. Not all deforestation is intentional. Some is caused by a combination of human and natural factors like wildfires and subsequent overgrazing, which may prevent the growth of young trees.

SOME OTHER COMMON REASONS ARE:

• To make more land available for housing and urbanization
• To harvest timber to create commercial items such as paper, furniture and homes 
• To create ingredients that are highly prized consumer items, such as the oil from palm trees
• To create room for cattle ranching 

Common methods of deforestation are burning trees and clear cutting. These tactics leave the land completely barren and are controversial practices. 

Clear cutting is when large swaths of land are cut down all at once. A forestry expert quoted by the Natural Resources Defense Council describes clear cutting as "an ecological trauma that has no precedent in nature except for a major volcanic eruption."

DEFORESTATION AND CLIMATE CHANGE

Deforestation is considered to be one of the contributing factors to global climate change.

the No. 1 problem caused by deforestation is the impact on the global carbon cycle. Gas molecules that absorb thermal infrared radiation are called greenhouse gases. If greenhouse gases are in large enough quantity, they can force climate change.

The deforestation of trees not only lessens the amount of carbon stored, it also releases carbon dioxide into the air. This is because when trees die, they release the stored carbon. According to the 2010 Global Forest Resources Assessment, deforestation releases nearly a billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere per year, though the numbers are not as high as the ones recorded in the previous decade. Deforestation is the second largest anthropogenic (human-caused) source of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, ranging between 6 percent and 17 percent.