Deforestation

The Greatest
Deforestation
Deforestation is the action of
clearing a wide area of trees.
Its the cutting down of trees in
a large area, or the destruction
of forests by people.
Deforestation
• This process is so detrimental because trees
consume carbon dioxide from the atmosphere,
produce oxygen, and play essential roles in all
forest ecosystems. Deforestation manifests itself
in manynforms, including fires, clear-cutting for
agriculture, industrial development, logging for
timber, and degradation due to climate change.
The most evident and calamitous effect of
deforestation in Haiti has been soil erosion. With a
growing urban population, land remains scarce and
unequally distributed such that a majority of the
rural poor are in a desperate struggle for survival.
Causes
• Charcoal for energy
• Creating furnitures
 Charcoal for
energy
Charcoal is now Haiti’s most thriving market,
representing 90% of the country’s home and
industrial energy use. Charcoal is made by
burning wood with restricted air flow.
Charcoal is viewed as advantageous
because it’s more energy dense and burns
hotter and cleaner than the original
firewood. Haiti’s bent dependency on
charcoal has gotten so great that many
Haitians are crossing the Dominican border
to illegally clear trees. Predicting this
aggravated reliance on trees for energy, the
Dominican Republic banned the production
of charcoal to protect its forests and began
subsidizing propane to wean its population
off fuel wood. An illegal market for coal is
now roaring within Haiti that is dramatically
accelerating deforestation in the Dominican
Sierra.
Creating
furnitures
Consequences
• Soil erosion
• Extinction of certain species
• Climate change
Soil erosion
Further effects of
deforestation include soil
erosion and coastal flooding.
Trees help the land to retain
water and topsoil, which
provides the rich nutrients to
sustain additional forest life.
Without forests, the soil erodes
and washes away, causing
farmers to move on and
perpetuate the cycle.
Extinction of
certain
species
Habitat destruction and
degradation, inflicted as
humans expand our activity
further into the last wild places,
is a powerful engine for
extinction. As forest loss
marches along, it carries
alongside it the possibility of
extinction for hundreds of
species that depend on narrow
slices of forest habitat for
survival
Climate
change
Forest loss is both a cause
and an effect of our changing
climate. Climate change can
damage forests, for instance
by drying out tropical
rainforests and increasing fire
damage in boreal forests.
Inside forests, climate change
is already harming biodiversity,
a threat that is likely to
increase.
Solution
•