The Deforestation of the Ecuadorian Amazon Essay

Deforestation presents in an abundance of ways, including fires, clear-cutting for agriculture, ranching and development, unsustainable logging for timber, and degradation due to climate change. The foremost reason of deforestation in Latin America is the requirement for food, fuel, shelter, and foreign exchange. Year on year, a space of tropical forest the size of Great Britain is "converted" from an area equal to the size of Europe. Ever since 1950, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), half of the world 's forests have disappeared. “Latin America has lost 37 percent of its tropical forests,” says the FAO. As more and more of Latin American forest are degraded, more and more detrimental effects are being seen. Deforestation is changing a number of resources for tribal groups, altering their way of life, temperatures are increasing at a dangerous rate because of a buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, habitats and species such as plants and wildlife are being annexed due to the destructive effects of deforestation. Deforestation is inarguably helpful to supplying money to countries that sell the products from the forest, but huge wealth being generated from the forests comes with large-scale environmental and social costs. The local residences are not benefitting and the funds are being siphoned out of the region.

Today, the total percentage of forest cover of the earth is approximately thirty percent (“Deforestation”). That is about nine percent of the world’s total surface. The largest rainforest is the Amazon River Basin, located in South America. The Amazon is home to many species of animals, insects, plants and trees. Many of the trees and plants in the Amazon produce about twenty percent of the oxygen on earth, and absorb carbon. However, the Amazon is decreasing in size every day due to the ongoing deforestation of the land. Deforestation is when the forest of the land are cleared or destroyed, in order to be used for other actions (“Deforestation”). The Amazon is twenty percent less than it was about forty years ago (Wallace). In just about

Deforestation is the clearing of a forest and/or cutting down of trees for human benefits such as agriculture, wood exports, etc. Deforestation is the cause of numerous environmental impacts such as habitat loss, flooding and soil erosion. It can also cause climate change, by reducing the amount of rainfall and changing the amount of sunlight reflected from Earth’s surface and increases the risk of forest . Tree growth is important for biodiversity because they absorb carbon dioxide which is a harmful greenhouse gas . However, since deforestation reduces natural carbon sinks, it disrupts the balance between oxygen and carbon dioxide in the air causing the amount of carbon dioxide in the air to increase. This poses a serious

In Middle and South America, it is evident that human interactions affect the physical features. The human interaction that affects Middle and South America is deforestation. In 1970’s a period of deforestation began in Brazil with the construction of the Trans-Amazon Highway; the road allowed migrant farmers to grow crops (Pulsipher & Pulsipher 2012). Deforestation continued throughout Middle and South America. The use lodging of hardwoods, extracting minerals, oil, gas, stones and clearing off land for raising cattle, and growing crops has impacted most of the land in Middle and South America (Pulsipher & Pulsipher 2012). The human interaction of deforestation has led to many environmental issues, changes in physical features. There are loss

The aim of this is to bring wealth to the area by using its natural

From 1990 to 2005, deforestation, or the removal of trees, was happening at an average rate of 13 million hectares (32.11 million acres) per year (Hope 247). In many ways, deforestation has been the reason for great economic success which turns people on to the idea even more. Deforestation is an essential element in promoting and encouraging developmental growth. Some places around the world may feel obligated to resort to deforestation due to population increases around the world. The concept of deforestation may seem to have a positive impact on society, but many people fail to consider the importance of replanting the trees that were harvested and removed. Deforestation mainly affects North and South America, but because of the Transamazon

Individuals have been deforesting the Earth for a large number of years, fundamentally to clear land for yields or domesticated animals. "Deforestation" is the lasting devastation of timberlands with a specific end goal to make the area accessible for different uses; what's more, as indicated by the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization an expected 18 million sections of land of backwoods, which is generally the nation's extent of Panama, are lost every year; Although tropical woods are to a great extent bound to creating nations, they aren't simply meeting nearby or national needs; monetary globalization implies that the needs and needs of the worldwide populace are hunkering down on them also.

The Amazon rainforest, known as well as the Amazonia, is considered as the “lung of the planet,” due to it produces about 20% of earth’s oxygen. The Amazon is contained by the countries of Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and the three Guianas (Amazon Rainforest). Unfortunately, one phenomenon that has been affecting the Amazon rainforest is the deforestation; according to the Encyclopædia Britannica, deforestation is the transformation of forest to non-forest land cover by human activities.

During the past 30 years, deforestation in the Amazon has been a huge problem. The Amazon Rainforest is home to an estimated one-third of all known animal species and makes up about half of the world’s rainforests. The reasons for the deforestation is to expand pastures for cattle production, and fields to grow soybeans. ("Brazil Geography-Introduction." N.p., n.d. Web. 4 May 2016.)

Deforestation is an environmental problem everybody gets affected by; but not equally. Cutting down trees and degrading the soil of an eco-system can change it for the worse and leave it unrecoverable. The Amazon Rainforest is a large and very biodiverse ecosystem that stretches across 5,500,000 kilometers. The Amazon Rainforest is not a stranger to deforestation since the late 1960’s. Deforestation in the amazon forest will cripple all organisms that rely heavily on the forest to provide for a sustainable life, while others not directly impacted may benefit from it. Other people may benefit from the deforestation of the Amazon Rainforest from the profit that comes with the use of land for agriculture/livestock. However, the tribes, plants, and animals, that live in the Amazon Rainforest suffer from the loss of Biodiversity, the habitat and resources that are being taken away from clearing forests, and the reduced air quality along with the increased carbon emissions. Deforestation is a process of demolition towards the ecosystem.

Indigenous tribes are having their lands destroyed as a result of deforestation. In the Amazon, deforestation threatens 180 indigeous groups that depend on the rainforest (Visser). Water vapor, which is necessary for the water cycle to work, has decreased because of deforestation. Deforestation has caused a 4 percent decrease in water vapor flows from land (Bradford). A large part of the world’s diet comes from the rainforest which is at risk because of deforestation. Eighty percent of third world countries food intake comes from rainforests which puts their diet at risk (“Tropical Rainforest Destruction: Reasons and

“The lungs of the Earth,” the Amazon rainforest is the largest tropical rainforest in the world and is home to a countless number of species (National Geographic, 2015). In 2013 the rate of deforestation in the Amazon rose by 29 percent and was largely observed in the states of Para and Mato Grosso in Brazil (Teixeira, 2014). The latest images taken by NASA’s satellite, Aqua reveals that multiple fires took place in these mentioned regions and were reported to have been intentional in order to clear land area (NASA, 2014). Earlier this year Sao Paulo faced severe draughts and the “drizzle city” was compared to a desert with 20 million settlers facing water cuts (Lean, 2015). Scientists believe the reason for this is the clearing

protect a substantial part of the diversity in the Amazon,” said Hans ter Steege, a

In the entire world, about 7 million square miles get enough rain to be rainforests, but as a result of human inhabitants, housing and buildings interfere. Most farmland on the earth is from deforestation of rainforest, and as these farms expand, more land is taken. When the land is cleared, it can either result in permanent or temporary deforestation, permanent clearly being the most environmentally harmful. If rainforest land is cleared, built on, and used frequently, the plants and trees will not grow back. However if a plot of land is left unattended, tree cover will return over time. In the Amazon rainforest, much of the land has been permanently taken from nature and the natives, shown by the fact that the number of natives has gone from around 7 million to less than 200 thousand in the area.

A study published by an international team of scientists warns the Amazon is being largely impacted by dams, mining, overfishing, and deforestation. In this transect the focus will be deforestation