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Ashlyn Fritzinger

Deforestation Feedback Loop

The vicious cycle of deforestation

Deforestation

  • Another word for the mass destruction of trees is deforestation.
  • Over 30 million acres of forests and woodlands are lost every year due to deforestation.
  • This causes a massive loss of income to poor people living in remote areas who depend on the forest to survive.
  • The causes of deforestation are mainly man-made issues such as agriculture, logging, and urbanization.
  • There are natural causes like forest fires.

Causes of deforestation

Causes

The most major causes of deforestation are agriculture, logging, urbanization. These processes increase the chances of starting a natural processes of deforestation known as forest fires. Any process of the loss of trees creates a vicious environmental cycle with devastating results. This includes habitat loss and or animal extinction, climate change, ecosystem imbalances, and atmosphere changes.

The release of CO2 into the atmosphere

The release of CO2

When industries cut down trees for either agriculture, logging, or urbanization, the CO2 emissons increases in our atmosphere as the oxygen decreases. Accoring to climatecouncil.org in 2015 – 2017, global loss of tropical forests contributed about 4.8 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide per year or about 8-10% of annual human emissions of carbon dioxide. But in most cases, forests absorb more CO2 than they release, making them carbon sinks.

Heat absorption on land

Heat absorption on land

After the trees are wiped out of the area and there is very little vegetation left, more heat is absorbed by the Earth than through the plants that used to be in that same place. Then, as Earth's surface has heated, it releases infrared engergy back into the atmosphere.

Greenhouse gases trap reflected heat and CO2

Greenhouse gases capture heat and CO2

The greenhouse gases capture most of the refected heat and extra CO2 that is being released into the atmosphere. This is because the forest is not capturing anymore CO2 from man-made causes of deforestation because they were cut down. This make Earth's atmosphere and land even more warmer than it is supposed to be.

Decrease in wildlife

As temperatures keep rising, natural selection comes into play and creates "survival of the fittest" senarios. The wildlife that is less fit to stand the worsening conditions will have to leave there place they called home. These animals do not know where they are headed so they come across cities and urban areas and people see the wild animals as a threat.

Decrease in wildlife

More CO2 and heat capsured in the atmosphere

The more and more heat that is absorbed into the atmosphere the hotter the enviroment. This means that the atmosphere has less moisture in it creating a much more drier atmosphere.

More CO2 and heat into the atmosphere

Natural occurences of forest fires

Forest fires

Forest fires increase carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, contributing to the greenhouse effect and climate change. In addition, ashes destroy much of the nutrients and erode the soil, causing flooding and landslides. The less rainfall that occurs the drier and more vulnerable the forest is to fire. A current example of this occurance is the australian wildfires. The cause of this the warmer and drier weather occuring also including the human-made issues.

Huge decline of biodiversity

Huge decline in biodiversty

Deforestation directly leads to a decline of biodiversity when animal species that live in trees no longer have their habitat and cannot relocate, then therefore become extinct. Deforestation can also lead certain tree species to permanently disappear, which affects biodiversity of plant species in an environment. In Australia, The figures for NSW (New South Wales-state) include birds, reptiles, and mammals, except bats. It also excludes insects and frogs, so the real sum is almost certain to be higher, the ecologists said. Almost a third of koalas in NSW may have been killed in the fires, and a third of their habitat has been destroyed, said Federal Environment Minister Sussan Ley.

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