Are there any permanent effects of logging? if so what are they?

Question

me and my friend are doing the topic logging for a project but we can't seem to find any answers to the question above so please get back to us as soon as possible.

Thankyou.

Answer 1

Logging causes habitat fragmentation which is the largest reason for animal extinction. Furthermore, rain forests are the source of evolution. The reason that earth in the past has always been able to withstand mass extinctions was because rain forests had a massive gene pool that allows for evolution of new organisms to replace the extinct ones. If logging destroys too many rain forests, we lose this buffer against mass extinction. Furthermore, genetic engineering uses genes from exotic creatures that often are found in rain forests. Logging will cause extinction of many organisms which will lessen the library of genes that can be used by genetic engineers.

Answer 2

Some will argue nothing is permanent.   In 100 million years the west coast of the US will have traveled up into Alaska.   The rocky mountain chain will be worn down into rolling hills.  

As for the next human lifespan, yes logging has effects.   The roads built to carry logs out channel water through pipes which cause washouts below them instead of trickling down the hill in a wide area.    Even if the roads are removed later, the channels are already dug and will continue to widen.   Some minerals are removed with each tree that leaves on a truck.

Answer 3

in case you need a source for your information, check out the Society of american foresters (SAF) at http://www.safnet.org/

if you look up logging in the search engine you may get some other info.

Answer 4

Along with the loss of mature trees for decades -- many forest fauna depend on mature trees for hollows to live in, logging simplifies the ecosystem. Forever is a long time, but industrial logging -- even single tree selection -- simplifies the forest by removing trees that are paticular species (the ones that make better timber) and removing trees in a certain age class (the ones that make the best saw logs. This will inevitably result in a logged forest being less effective habitat overall.

Logging also has long term effects on soil and water.

For water, the yeild into the catchment increases dramatically immediately following logging, because there are less trees to prevent the run-off into creeks. Over time though, logging forests decreases the amount of water in the creeks and rivers, because it stimulate regrowth to an unnatural degree, which sucks up alot more water. This is partly why plantations are so terrible for the environment, because they use so much water.

Logging also simplifies and destabilises the soil. There is so much complex life going on down there that we barely understand. Exposing the soil to the sun when it is turned over by logging equipment kills microscopic fungi that live there and help give the soil its structure. Once they're gone, tey're very hard to get back.

So: Loss of habitat features, loss of water, simplification of the soil...

Answer 5

Prior to the European influx into north America, forests of mature hardwoods covered  from the Atlantic to the Mississippi river. It is said that a squirrel could travel that distance without ever touching the ground.

If left alone for a few million years, that forest might come back, but probably not.

Clear-cutting leads to such drastic changes in the natural systems that they are gone for ever. That is because it is much more than trees. There is a cycle of life on the land, the soil, the streams and rivers and the sea that developed over time, and will not ever come back.

Selective cutting, where practiced is so far little better. The strongest and healthiest trees are harvested, leaving those with questionable genetics as seed trees. More often than that however, the mixed forest is replaced with one or two commercial species, and instead of a forest we have vast tree farms. As with any monoculture, the diversity being gone, one disease can kill off every tree for hundreds of square miles.

The effects of all logging are permanent.

Answer 6

Indiscriminate logging in the past changed forested areas into meadows, prairie, and other non-forested ecosystems. For example, when the settlers first arrived in Virginia and the eastern coastal colonies were logged, they never reverted to their original status.

Modern, directed logging operations do consider the surrounding ecosystems and do not remove all trees indiscriminately. Your state department of natural resources may have information on managed logging in the state parks where you live.

Answer 7

One cultural impact of logging is as damaging as the environmental impacts.

After the trees are harvested, and only snags and seedlings left ( cut a tree and plant a thousand seedlings, how many centuries before you have the same amount of wood back?), the fellers are out of work. Not much call for chainsaws, yarders, logging truck drivers, choker setters, cruisers etc in town, and when the trees stop coming in the mills shut down. Whole towns are plunged into depressions. To top it off, they blame the absence of trees on the environmentalists.

The forest products industry should quit patting itself on the back, and give back, but they won't, just like mine operators, and any other exploitative business that exists largely on resources that belong to the people.

Answer 8

Ever hear of the cedars of Lebanon? Ever wonder where they went?

Logging is a form of mining of natural resources.

It is partially renewable, but cannot really be considered a renewable resource as currently carried out even in the best cases.

It destroys forests and their entire communities, plant, mineral, animal and human.

An old and very true saying in the north coasts is "Every time a logger fells a tree, he kills a Fisherman's family."