The Importance Of Deforestation Of The Amazon

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.

Brazil’s rainforests and America’s rainforests are great examples of the negative effect that deforestation has on these specific areas. One of the rising challenges in our rapidly growing world is the destruction of rainforests and how it is slowly ruining the world that we live in. Deforestation has a lot of destructive impacts on the environment that is surrounding us, one of the most important being its effect on the climate. The fast rise in the world’s population, calling for high demand of resources, is only hastening the effects of deforestation, which can hopefully be put an end to through the enforcement of a handful of simple, key, and sustainable solutions.

Deforestation poses an alarming threat to Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, and it has been a serious concern for over 40 years. For thousands of years, the abundant, valuable resources in the Amazon were familiar only to the indigenous people of the region. In the 1500’s, before European colonization of Brazil, there were an estimated six to nine million individuals part of different cultures that made up a rich Amazonian society (“History”). Surrounded by the luxuriant rainforest and its natural resources, these indigenous tribes were able to thrive by utilizing the resources without destroying their habitat. After European emigration, the government of Brazil exploited the value of the Amazon’s resources in the twentieth century. In the 1970’s, the Brazilian government discovered the “untapped source of boundless potential” hiding in the Amazon and began using incentives to persuade settlers to develop its resources (Casey). Once economists realized the importance of the resources found within the rainforest, European pioneers set out to transform the Amazon into their home. By endorsing colonization, the government could not only boost the country’s economy, but also gain control over Brazil’s vast territory. The government supported migration to the rainforest and campaigned for the construction of infrastructure (“History”). In concurrence, the development of roads such as the Trans-Amazonian Highway, a 2,000 mile road built in 1972, granted people and machinery entrance to

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

“The claim that the rain forests are being destroyed "at a rate of 20 football fields a minute" is false . In addition, claims that the Amazon serves as the "lungs of the earth" and that over "450 species" are

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

"An estimated 18 million acres (7.3 million hectares) of forest are lost each year." (LiveScience).

The Denver Academy has recently researched and defined some of the important facts surrounding the Amazon rainforest. In 2017, the Amazon rainforest covers 2.1 million square miles of South America. It is a vast ecosystem home to 10% of the world’s known species (The Denver Academy). They go on to say that the trees are so dense, when it rains, it takes 10 minutes for the water to break through the forest roof. The destruction of this habitat could lead to extinction of these species, and have devastating impacts all over the world from the loss of the lungs of the earth. While it is mainly concentrated in Brazil there are also large portions of the rainforest in Peru and Colombia, so many populations and economies are directly affected

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.

A study by Mongbay shows a loss since 1978 until today of about 79% of forest deforestation. Decades ago when humans first occupied the earth and began to use fire; deforestation slow began. History has changed and so has technology and methods. The axe has evolved into a chainsaw which accelerates the process of deforestation. Chopping down trees has been the human quest for shelter, food, and warmth. Trees provide humans with wood for shelter. Wood also provides fire for fuel to keep us warm at night. Lastly trees provide us with human food such as roots, nuts, and branches for burning. Humans have used an axe and required endless energy to chop a tree down. The alternation from a stone axe to a chainsaw has increased the clearing of

Nowadays deforestation is the one of the most important and controversial environmental issues in the world. Deforestation is cutting down, clearing away or burning trees or forests. Particularly tropical rainforests are the most waning type of forests because of its location in developing countries such as Indonesia, the Philippines, India, central African countries and Brazil. Deforestation rate in those regions is high enough to worry about, because of large economic potential of forest areas. As the result of causes such as agriculture land expansion, logging for timber, fire blazing and settling infrastructure there might be serious impacts in future. For instance, extinction of endemic species of animals and plants which will be