Timber/Deforestation

1. Timber/Deforestation Myra Smith – Sarah Tovar – Ashley Shelton – John O’Leary – Azemina M.

2. Historical Context • Deforestation became a problem because of large losses in tropical locations. • Deforestation is a natural process, so it dates back to before modern time. • Deforestation is often committed in an attempt to increase or sustain the local population. Such as with urbanization, boundary waters, and Slash and Burn. • Deforestation is taking place at an estimated 20 million hectares per year. • Deforestation is mostly happening between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn and in the Brazilian part of the Amazon.

3. Thomas K. Rudel hypothesizes that powerful businesses such as the plantation owners and extractive enterprises and landless peasants along with the local and international governments, banks and markets all cause deforestation by their mutual interactions. • He (Rudel) cites resources indicating that deforestation rates increased when international banks loaned money to countries for frontier development projects.

4. Geographical Context • Rates of deforestation vary around the world. Southeast Asia and parts of South America are among the regions of highest concern to environmentalists. • Since 1600, 90% of the virgin forests that once covered much of the lower 48 states have been cleared away. Most of the remaining old-growth forests in the lower 48 states and Alaska are on public lands. • In the Pacific Northwest about 80% of this forestland is slated for logging. • The world’s tropical forests are disappearing at an alarming rate. • A recent estimate is that about 100,000 km2 are deforested each year, and another 100,000 km2 are degraded. • Estimates are constantly improving, based on satellite imagery, and deforestation rates change in response to social and economic conditions, as well as quality and accessibility of remaining forest.

5. Tropical forests once occupied 16 million km2, today about 8-9 million km2 remain • It is estimated that Latin America and Asia have already lost 40% of their original forest; Africa a little more than half. • In many countries the rate of deforestation is accelerating. • For example, most of the forested areas of Bangladesh, India, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and parts of Brazil's rain forest could be gone by the end of the century. • Only in the Congo Basin and some of the more isolated areas of the Amazon Basin does the forest remain largely intact.

6. Major Players • Deforestation is clearing Earth's forests on a massive scale. • This often results in damage to the quality of land. • Forests still cover about 30 percent of the world’s land area, but swaths the size of Panama are lost each and every year. • The world’s rain forests could completely vanish in one hundred years at the current rate of deforestation.

7. Forests are cut down for many reasons. • Most of them are related to money or to people’s need to provide for their families. • Forests are cut down as a result of growing urban sprawl. • Logging operations, which provide the world’s wood and paper products, also cut countless trees each year. • Loggers, some of them acting illegally, also build roads to access more and more remote forests. This leads to further deforestation. • The biggest driver of deforestation is agriculture. • Farmers cut forests to provide more room for planting crops or grazing livestock.

8. Approximately 40,000 hectares of Pailin’s forests have been cleared and burned to make way for crops including corn, beans and cassava. • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BONcnWALAAk&feature=player_embedded

9. Sources of Conflict • Desertification • Build up of CO2 • Erosion • Unusable land • Landslides • Habitat fragmentation • Loss Scientific possibilities • Cures for deadly diseases

10. Impact on the U.S. • One major effect of deforestation is climate change. • Changes to the surroundings done by deforestation work in many ways. • One, there is abrupt change in temperatures in the nearby areas. Forests naturally cool down because they help retain moisture in the air. • Water table is the common source of natural drinking water by people living around forests. • Water table is replenishing. That means the supply of water underground could dry up if not replenished on a regular basis. When there is rain, forests hold much of the rainfall to the soil through their roots.

11. The immediate and long-term consequences of global deforestation are almost certain to jeopardize life on Earth. • Some of these consequences are loss of biodiversity; the destruction of forest-based-societies, and climatic disruption. • As a result of deforestation, we are losing between 50 and 100 animal and plant species each day. • Flooding is also a quite serious consequence of deforestation. • Clearing the forest dramatically increases the surface run-off from rainfall, mainly because a greater proportion of the rain reaches the ground due to a lack of vegetation which would suck up the excess rainfall.

12. Proposed Solutions • Recycle • The main and probably the most important way to reduce deforestation is to inform and give consumers the choice to reject forest made products, though they will need viable sustainable alternatives to choose from. • Sustainable logging. • Sensitive regions as protected areas. • In December 2007 the Framework Convention on Climate Change explored ways of reducing emissions from deforestation in developing countries.

13. Sources • Historical Context • http://www.d.umn.edu/biology/courses/bio5865/documents/Deforestation.pdf • http://www.d.umn.edu/biology/courses/bio5865/documents/Deforestation.pdf • http://www.123helpme.com/preview.asp?id=150919 • http://www.123helpme.com/view.asp?id=122399 • http://www.123helpme.com/view.asp?id=25872 • Geographical Context • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestationhttp://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange2/current/lectures/deforest/deforest.html • Major Players • http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/deforestation-overview.html • http://content.undp.org/go/newsroom/2010/april/deforestation-in-cambodia-raises-concern-about-land-degradation-.en • Sources of Conflict • Proposed Solutions • http://www.d.umn.edu/biology/courses/bio5865/documents/Deforestation.pdf • http://www.effects-of-deforestation.com/solutions-to-deforestation.php • http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1505/ifor.10.3.433?journalCode=ifre • Impact on U.S. • http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Effect-of-Deforestation&id=510236 • http://www.umich.edu/~gs265/society/deforestation.htm