(source: fernando)
Did you know that today only about 3 percent America’s original rainforests remain? The fate of the world’s rainforests isn’t much better. Even though about half of the worlds plant and animal species live in rainforests, over 23 million acres of this land is destroyed each year, driving approximately 50,000 species to extinction every year. Scientists project that at this rate – thirty acres of trees cut every minute (the area the size of a football field cut every second) – a quarter of the world’s species will be exterminated in the next 50 years. But the effects of deforestation don’t stop there. Here’s a look at the major ways in which deforestation is impacting our world and our lives today.
Impact on Global Climate
(sources: stuckincustoms, shawnshawn, jamidwyer, piersbarber)
The impact of rainforest deforestation on our climate is twofold. For our part, deforestation accounts for a staggering 20 percent of all carbon emissions from human activities.This means 1.5 billion tons of carbon released into the atmosphere each year and an estimated 87 – 130 billion tons by 2100. To put it into perspective, this figure is more than the emissions that would result in over 13 years of cumulative global fossil fuel combustion. Furthermore, on the part of these natural rainforests, contrary to previous research that suggested that they emit a net positive of carbon into the atmosphere, they actually function as carbon sinks. Slowing deforestation by 50 percent from current levels (by 2050) could save approximately 50 billion tons of carbon from being emitted into the atmosphere – or the equivalent of six years of cumulative global fossil fuel emissions.
Impact on Biodiversity
(sources: q8camera, law_keven, guenterlietenbauer, pg-photography)
A majority of the world’s deforestation activity today takes place in tropical rainforests. Incidentally, these rainforests are home to the world’s largest and most diverse species, who, because of their local/endemic distributions will almost certainly be extinct if their habitat is lost. Not only that, but these rainforests also contain millions of additional species that are either unknown or have yet to be documented, which is an immensly important fact since a substantial number of common but vital medicines and cures used today come from such plants (many of which have become endangered). Environment News Service put the extinction rate at 1,000 times the background rate and warned that the rate may climb to 10,000 times the background rate in the next century if nothing is done to prevent deforestation.
Flash Floods, Drought, Land Slides, and Raging Fires
(sources: johnperriam, ozyman, finntasia, judybaxter)
Trees in these rainforests play a vital role in regulating our ecosystem. However, when they are removed, there are a multitude of largely irreversible consequences. When the trees are no longer present, they can’t absorb the rain water through their roots and evaporate it back into the atmosphere, resulting in a much drier climate, leading most notably to drought. Additionally, when trees are no longer present to anchor the soil, this causes erosion flooding and landslides. Finally, these dried forests are much more succeptible to devastating large-scale fires such as the 1997 and 1998 fires that burned millions of acres through Indonesia, Brazil, Columbia, and other places.
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6 Comments
November 29th, 2008 at 11:25 pm
Your 3% is based on original temperate rain forest in the U.S.A. It has nothing to do with tropical rain forests. The numbers you are citing are far worse than the world average. STOP FAKING THE NUMBERS…IT DOESN’T HELP.
November 30th, 2008 at 10:36 am
I notice you used my photo, which is creative commons, so that is okay. However, I don’t like you twisting it to have something to do with deforestation. That was a photo from after the Yellowstone fires, which is a natural occurrence and important for the growth cycle of the forest.
Plus, I don’t believe in man-made global warming or any that nonsense, so I don’t appreciate my photos being used to help propagate what is already mass-delusion.
December 16th, 2008 at 11:47 am
nice
December 30th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
A epidemic of bugs is killing the pine forests of Canada. This loss will certainly add to your stats, but is a natural occurrence. The changes rendered upon the American Middle Class by the (GRD) great republican depression will reduce exploitation of nature, and hopefully reverse some global warming to a much greater extent than a few bugs in some pine trees. The uptick in Chinese coal burning will soon be reduced or reversed as the huge number, (more than all high school students in America) of post grad students enrolled there begin to untangle the Chinese Energy Problem. They will use desert areas to go solar electric in all likelihood, and unfettered by patent law, capitalist contrivances and union debacles, produce good, clean, cheap and perpetual power from the desert sun while Americans, drowned in red tape and political horse-shit including Saudi and OPEC influence peddling will die off in third world style, nickel and diming each other to a well deserved and timely death. As the U.S. middle class is eroded, the lowest class will revert to eco-friendly shanty towns as in the past, and return in many ways to peasant means and methods for survival. Their carbon foot-print will be considerably smaller, and they will plant out of necessity! They will likely compost, even humanure and contribute little to waterway pollution. Computers will stay, eradicating newspapers, solar powered cell-phones will stay, rendering land-lines useless, LED lighting will reign supreme, and solar powered batteries will be everywhere. Few folks in Shanty town will be ‘on-grid’. Most will be part-time, and seasonal employed, and growing pot, barley for home brew and fruit for home made wine will be as popular as sauerkrauting, bread making and shoe making. The internet will provide the instructions, the map to survival for the hungry masses as the North American factory structure is moved to Asia and the GRD will work out in the end as the greatest friend the eco-system has ever had!
January 21st, 2009 at 2:22 am
Interesting! thanks for posting it.
April 15th, 2009 at 11:36 pm
They must stop making biofouls .they are not able to proove biofouls are renable so the must stop saying they are renable.They must emiedatly stop making biofouls.They do no good for nobody.A lot of bad things started after they started making biofouls on a globale scale.they take huge amounts of time water machine and human energy fertalizers pestacides government subsudes and other things.Theyer probly not worth the cost to human society to make them.Africa losing part of there top soil to the ocean and the horrable things that happend due to that cutting down more parts of the beuatiful rainforests creating more carbon which worsens the global worming problem are scientific proof some of the bad things biofouls do.Biofouls creates invasive species problem which worsens the endangered species problem.Are hurting the beuatiful rainforests which scientests have proven Earth needs to stay a living planet and other thing that proove they must emedatly stop making biofouls.Lifes the beautafulest of all.We all have the right to all good and all life.Biofouls are hurting the needs and good we all have the right to.Real renable energies and a healthy living planet that we live on are the only easest simpalest fastest way to get all of our needs.Bioufols are counterproductive to that .They are hurtful to everybody.For the good of all and for the sake of the rainforests for the sake of all that we need they must emedietly stop making biofouls.People and all life is the most precious of all and we all have the right to all good things.
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