Deforestation
Deforestation is the action of clearing out an area with trees. This is done mostly for timber or to obtain more land for development. This might be the most common way to obtain new land and wood, but there are downsides to this action. The rainforest is the home to many diverse organisms, but as the trees get cut down and the rainforest gets smaller, the organisms who are calling the rainforests "home" are losing their habitat. This has been a great problem recently due to the uses of electronic devices to cut the trees, it is said that 119,139-150,219km² of forest land is being lost each year, which sums up to be about 36 football fields worth of space cut down each minute. Unfortunately, as we gain land and wood, we are loosing other important things. Apart from the dying animals and trees, we are loosing the most common source of oxygenation. Trees make their food, glucose(C6H12O6), using water (H2O) and carbon dioxide (CO2). Trees(and other plants) break part CO2 into 1 carbon and 2 oxygen and water into 2 hydrogen and 1 oxygen. then using the parts it makes glucose. When it is done there are some byproducts, the oxygen we need to survive. We have been constantly lowering the amount of oxygen in the air by having factories spew out carbon dioxide and then cutting down trees that are needed to put back the oxygen we are breathing.
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Reasons Of Deforestation
Logging For TimberLogging is the process of cutting down the trees, cutting them into appropriate lengths, then transporting them to a sawmill to process into timber. The threat of logging increased as ways to cut and transport trees were introduced. Instead of having a hand saw, electric saws were used, letting loggers cut more trees in less time, therefor dealing more damage
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Expanding Land For Plantations
To expand land for farming, people may cut trees. This is especially a problem with development for palm oil in Borneo. Within Indonesia, the land they use for planting oil palms extended over 6,000km² in 1985 to 60,000km² in 2007. Over half of the currently active plantation was made on what used to be part of the rainforest.
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Expanding Land For UrbanizationLike expanding land for farming, expanding land for urbanization requires people to cut down an area of a forest, then build a city in the area made by chopping down the forest. This might be the simplest answer to the growing population, but it is not the smartest. Along with the city and the people, expanding land for
urbanization brings pollution caused by cities closer to the forest. |