Environmental Impacts Of Ecuador Essay

     Ecuador is one of the smallest countries of South America. It lies on the West Coast of the continent between Colombia and Peru. The equator crosses Ecuador and gives the country its name. Ecuador is the Spanish word for equator.

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 defined as: “the clearing of virgin forests, or intentional destruction or removal of trees and other vegetation for agricultural, commercial, housing, or firewood use without replanting and without allowing time for the forest to regenerate itself” (SCRIBD). Deforestation has been a problem in Latin America since the early 1900s and the severity of the dilemma is increasing rapidly. Deforestation not only has consequences for the environment, but also, the indigenous people and the national economy. The logging industry in Latin America is often exploited by multinational companies that are not properly regulated. The land that has provided a home and cultivated indigenous development for centuries is being dissipated rapidly. Due to an exponentially growing global population, there is an increased demand for low priced goods--like timber, crops, and meat. Many Latin American countries value revenue from selling these goods over the health of their local ecosystems. The crisis of deforestation and habitat loss is shifting from a local to global problem. As deforestation continues, global warming escalates worldwide, impacting every country and person. About 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions come from tropical deforestation, which is more than from all the world’s cars, trucks and buses combined (Schwartzman). Puerto Rico and Brazil provide contrasting examples of the impact of deforestation. Puerto Rico had an economic and environmental shift

Advances in technology have resulted in habitat loss due to clearing of land, chemical contamination and has enhanced global warming. Sustainable technology is producing more than 600 tons of greenhouse gas for every gigawatt of energy produced. This is destroying the ozone layer and has enhanced global warming. Technology has many negative effects on the environment and is causing the world to

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

Tropical rainforests are the Earth?s oldest, richest, most productive, and most complex living ecosystems. They are located throughout many of the world?s continents including South America, Africa, and Asia and are defined by a few specific factors. Their location must be within the regions of the tropics and they must receive between 4-8 meters of rain per year (compared to about 1-2 meters in the United States). These forests also have no ?seasonality?, which means that they lack a definite dry or cold season of slowed growth.

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

Ecuador is a small country in western South America. It borders the Equator and the Pacific Ocean. The equator runs through Ecuador, which is how the country got its name (Ecuador Facts and Culture). Ecuador stays hot year round, because of its location on the equator. Ecuador is just over two hundred fifty thousand square kilometers and is divided into the Highlands, the Amazon, the Coast, and the Galapagos. The four different sections result in a versatile landscape that allows different types of agriculture and even different tourist attractions. The coast includes plains that are great for farming and rolling hills. The highlands include the Andes mountain range. The Amazon is a jungle-like area that has a host of exotic wildlife.

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.

Technology is making distribution, processing, production, development, and exploration of natural resources and alternative resources more cost effective, and protective in regard to the environment. The Technology that we have today has given humans a way of reducing negative effects on the environment that we have caused; such as the depletion of natural resources, the burning of fossil fuels, and other behaviors which have caused negative environmental effects. One effective way for technology to have a positive impact on our environment is

One of the main features of Ecuador ’s economy is its dependence on only a few key export commodities, most importantly oil and bananas. Oil accounts for approximately 40% of the export economy, while bananas are responsible for about 17%, and Ecuador is the largest producer of bananas in the world. The rest of the economy is mostly based on less important agricultural exports, such as shrimp and flowers, which account for 6% and 4% of exports respectively. Ecuador is almost completely reliant on the success of these few industries, particularly oil, and so has suffered through a cycle of boom and bust economies over the past several decades, since oil was discovered in the 1970s.

The rate of deforestation is increasing and the tropical forests are falling at approximately 140,000 acres per day (Miller & Tangley 1991: xvi). The forests are crucial to the environment. They are important in minimizing erosion, providing a stable habitat for many animals, and helping to keep the environment clean. Deforestation has devastating effects, not only on the biological dependents within the depleted forests, but also on the surrounding human-populated communities.

Technology is defined as anything that makes life easier. There are times where technology can make life easier just as a phone can make your life easier by allowing you something to use to stay in touch with those people that are around you. There are also times where technology can make life harder because it is used against nature and can ruin places. Some of those times are: the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, China’s environmental degradation, World War II, and the second Industrial Revolution. These are all times in history where the environment took a turn for the worst because of the newest technology that was created and used.

Deforestation is a major global problem with serious consequences to the planet. These consequences have a negative effect on the climate, biodiversity, the atmosphere and threatens the cultural and physical survival of life. Deforestation is the permanent destruction of indigenous forests and woodlands. It has resulted in the reduction of indigenous forests to four-fifths of their pre-agricultural area, so that now indigenous forests cover only 21% of the earth's land surface. The world Resources Institute regards deforestation as one of the worlds most pressing land use problem.