Effects of Deforestation - Essay Example

Effects of Deforestation Deforestation encompasses annihilating expansive forests’ tracts through cutting or burning mainly by human with the intention of establishing varied activities, for instance, farming. In most cases, this is permanent forests’ destruction to allow the commencement of varied activities whose duration is quite long to the extent humans do not consider replanting to replace lost vegetative cover (Spilsbury 26). Generally, this annihilation of vegetation poses extremely negative effects on the environment as well as climate. It changes the landscape dramatically in a short period. The changes in landscape range from the local loss of biodiversity, to large-scale effects on the environment whose effects may last for years. Mostly, this detrimentally affects ecosystem and atmosphere (Spilsbury 26).
Soil carbon storage is an essential component of the global carbon cycling. Mainly, they do have high carbon content and are vulnerable to erosion because of agricultural deforestation. The use of land, particularly annual cropping, has affected the carbon levels in the soil. The sites under annual cropping, in general, have the greatest soil loss and those with more continuous groundcover experience less soil loss. The soil carbon is very important in improving its varied physical properties for it augments water retention capacity, the cation exchange capacity besides binding clay’s particles into aggregates, hence making the entire soil’s structure more stable. Moreover, it prevents leaching of nutrients and is an integral part of the organic acids that make plant minerals (Henry 489). Without carbon, the land becomes very infertile as the soil is exposed to wind erosion.
Human-made and natural disasters such as logging and floods occur in and around water bodies. For many animals, the forest is their natural habitat (Yoshimura 146). When trees experience massive cutting or logging, it reduces their food, space and other resources available for them that live in forests comfortably. Consequently, this raises the extinction rate of animal species coupled with some disappearing completely (Yoshimura 146). Destruction of vegetative cover mainly affects both terrestrial and aquatic life. For aquatic animals, stream dwelling after floods causes disturbances in several ways thus becoming difficult for aquatic animals to find food after a flood, which yields to the death of many aquatic animals (Yoshimura 146).
In addition, deforestation changes the geomorphologic, hydrological, and biochemical states of streams by decreasing vapor-transpiration on the land surface, hence river discharge and run-off. This leads to the elimination of huge percentage of earth’s native vegetation that significantly alters the hydrological and morphological characteristics of watershed areas. The discharge has increases over the years and computer simulations suggest that about two thirds of the increase is due to deforestation (Coe et al. 119).
Extensive destruction of vegetation in most cases leads to increased conflict between people and forest animals. This occurs when people plant crops near the habitats of these forest animals. The animals will destroy the crops or injure humans, who in turn attack and killing them. In addition, there is people-to-people conflict whereby settlers invade deforested lands bringing their culture and influences thus changing lives of the indigenous forest people. The deforestation destroys trees used as medicine more so by the indigenous people. This creates conflict and people end up killing each other (Spilsbury 28).
Deforestation has a negative effect on the ecosystem and the atmosphere (Spilsbury 26). It is evident that deforestation does not benefit anyone and has long-term effects. Clearing of forests may be due to social, economic or political reasons. Whatever the short-term benefits, the result is devastating. The effects of deforestation are quite evident globally irrespective of concerned authorities coming up appropriate conservation methods meant to curb deforestation though humanity’s ignorance proves to be a big hindrance.
Work cited
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Coe, M., et al. "The Effects Of Deforestation And Climate Variability On The Streamflow Of The Araguaia River, Brazil." Biogeochemistry 105.1-3 (2011): 119-131. Academic Search Premier. Web. 27 June 2014.
Henry, A., et al. "Land Use Effects On Erosion and Carbon Storage of the Río Chimbo Watershed, Ecuador." Plant & Soil 367.1/2 (2013): 477-491. Academic Search Premier. Web. 27 June 2014.
Spilsbury, Richard. Deforestation Crisis. New York: Rosen Central, 2010. Print.
Yoshimura, Mayumi. "Effects Of Forest Disturbances On Aquatic Insect Assemblages." Entomological Science 15.2 (2012): 145-154. Academic Search Premier. Web. 27 June 2014.Bottom of Form Read More