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The Rapid Rate Of Tropical Deforestation

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The rapid rate of tropical deforestation has raised widespread concern about the consequential irreversible environmental changes that lead to the loss of plant and animal species, on scale never before experienced in human history. Tropical deforestation is the leading cause of biodiversity loss. Behind fossil fuel combustion, tropical deforestation is the second leading cause of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions with almost 20% of all global CO2 emissions are caused by deforestation.
Meanwhile, there is still substantial scientific uncertainty in most aspects of the global carbon cycle with respect to deforestation. In addition to acting as stores, sinks, and potential sources of carbon, tropical forests also are a green blanket over large equatorial areas, the region of the world where incoming solar radiation is most intense. Tropical forest provide a historically stable land surface for key processes, such as the strength of large-scale circulation cells, regional rainfall patterns, and energy balances, are even less understood than carbon dynamics. Safeguarding tropical forests, when and where appropriate, will help maintain hydrologic and other conditions that human take for granted. As FAO argues, forests are ‘doubly’ important to fighting global warming with 25% of all emissions reductions could be achieved by conserving and restoring tropical forests by 2050.
Global warming is attributed by most scientist to the growing accumulation of GHG in the atmosphere as a

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