How does deforestation affect global warming?

Question

How does deforestation affect global warming?

Answer 1

As plant need carbon dioxide to make food, clearing the forest would accumulate carbon dioxide in the air. As carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, it can affect the global warming by making it worse.

Answer 2

As trees balance the amount of gases like carbon,oxygen etc

if trees are cut we will get less amount of oxygen gas.Trees bring rain,less no. of trees less amount of water then there will be imbalance in environment .Which leads to temp. rising

& then to global warming

Answer 3

The greatest adverse impact of Deforestation is Greenhouse effect:

As described earlier, an approximate area of more than thirty five football grounds of rainforest are deforested all over the world in every minute. The main area attacked for deforestation is the tropical rainforest – situated in on and around equator.

A. The main reason for deforestation is the demand for fuel, wood and paper products, cattle ranching, farming, mining and road construction.

a. Fuel: Half of all the trees cut down in the world are used for fuel. Burning wood is common in developing countries where there are often no readily-available alternatives. Most of the trees cut are not replaced, causing the problems.

b. Wood and Paper Products: The use of wood and paper is a huge factor driving deforestation all over the world. Hardwoods like mahogany are sought after for furniture and are consequently very valuable. Some time, for small number of mahogany, whole forest area is often cut down for those few trees.

c. Cattle-ranching: Areas of rainforest, generally in developing countries, are cleared by cutting down all the vegetation and then burning it. Pastures of grass are then grown and used for grazing cattle. As soon as the cattle are a certain age, they are slaughtered. Although some of the meat goes to the locals, a lot goes to the cheap meat industries in countries such as the UK, USA, and China etc. After a few years, all the nutrients have been removed from the already poor soil and the land is useless, so another area of rainforest has to be cleared.

d. Farming: Large areas of rainforest are cleared for farmland all over the world. In developing countries there are two main types of farming: (i) 'Slash and Burn' and (ii) 'Subsistence Farming'.

(i) Slash and Burn: Areas of forest are cleared to grow crops for a couple of years, then left for a few years for the rainforest to recover, then the process starts again. Slash and burn is the most sustainable of the farming methods, but only if the population in the area is low, because as soon as you get more people in an area, there is less land available for each person and areas of land don't have enough time to recover, so the soil is quickly exhausted. Slash and burn also increases air pollution.

(ii) Subsistence Farming: Small areas of land that have been cleared are farmed. The produce is used to feed the family and provide a small surplus to buy other goods. The problem with this method is that the soil is quickly exhausted of its few nutrients and they are not replaced. This means that the farmers have to rely increasingly on fertilizers before eventually being forced to move.

e. Mining and Infrastructure: Minerals such as gold, bauxite (aluminium ore) and iron ore are often discovered in areas of rainforest. To mine them huge portions of rainforest are cleared, not just the area where the mine is, but also routes for roads and areas for storage of equipment and housing for men. In places where there are large rivers running through rainforest, deforestation often takes place in order to build hydroelectric power stations. The resulting dams cause enormous amounts of flooding behind the walls and large areas of drought downriver.

f. Population Increase: The world population is increasing day by day. With this explosion of population the amount of land needed for humans to live on also increases exponentially. More and more forest areas are being cleared to provide living space. This is known as ‘urbanization’.

B. The adverse effects of deforestation:

(i) Immediate effects of deforestation include the washing away of soil in the monsoon season. This is because trees are no longer anchoring and binding the soil and so mud slides take place. The earth is leached of minerals by the large amounts of water. The lack of vegetation also means that there will be very few animals in the area. The lack of decomposing vegetation and animals means that the nutrients are not replaced and the area quickly becomes infertile.

(ii) Rivers often silt up as soil is moved downriver and deposition takes place. Fish and plants relying on clear water die as the river becomes more and more clogged. This has a knock-on effect through the entire food chain.

(iii) If large areas of rainforest are cleared, the pattern of precipitation may change. This is because less evapotranspiration (evapotranspiration is a term used to describe the sum of evaporation and plant transpiration from the earth's land surface to atmosphere. Evaporation accounts for the movement of water to the air from sources such as the soil, canopy interception, and water bodies) takes place due to the lack of trees. Water is also not delayed before making its way through the ground because of the lack of trees, shrubs, and leaf litter.

(iv) Another very worrying effect of deforestation is global warming. The Earth is made habitable by a process called the greenhouse effect. Gases, mainly carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O) and water vapor (H2O), are found in the atmosphere. The effects of global warming are already showing themselves; the polar ice caps are melting and if this continues we are set for a significant rise in sea level, flooding many places.

For further information on environmental matter please visit

http://www.environmentengineering.blogsp...

Answer 4

When U cut down enough trees, What U get is more carbon into the atmosphere,because they'll be less trees to soak up the carbon going into the atmosphere. They'll be also less shade as a result.With more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere,more heat gets trapped in the atmosphere.

But it would make my life a little easier as a result;not having to sweat so much under a 100 degree day.

Answer 5

it is obvious... the deforestation of forests and jungles destroys ecosystems and it also gets rid of Earths natural co2 cleaner...which are trees.. but deforestation also causes some species of animals to become endangered. eg. will now be more common to see a deer in a city, because of this, and usually the deer turns into roadkill..

Answer 6

It has no effect that our science has ever measured. But, you will find plenty of pseudoscientists who will offer you their unsubstantiated opinions.

Cutting down trees on Earth does not affect solar output - which is the cause of the warming on ALL of the planets according to NASA. (Except Jupiter which is even warmer from it's own internal heat.)

Only1 and Andrew86; That's a cute story. Can you reference me to a scientific paper that actually verifies that with some measurements of some kind? NASA's Mission to Planet Earth could find that. What source do you have?

Answer 7

Okay eg.

When you walk in the middle of Toronto, or N.Y. breath, the air is dirty and you can just SMELL the carbon and greenhouse emissions, then walk into a forest or very rurral area, SMELL THE DIFFERENCE?

Deforestation not only takes homes away from creatures and animals, and the natural beuty of Earth, but also allows more emissions to enter the atmosphere, you see,

when a tree is there is absorbs the carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases and oozes out more fresh air, when you take away that tree for your fire or home that tree is nolonger absorbing it, so what is? NOTHING!

So, conclusion, the more forests you cut down, the less there is to absord bad air, allowing more and more emissions to enter the atmosphere.

So what can we do?

STOP DOING IT!

Answer 8

Ok...several points to be made...

More trees will undoubtedly convert more CO2 in our air into oxygen. But that assumes the CO2 is somewhere where trees can do the conversion process. I don't know exactly how this works, so get a 2nd opinion on the matter, but I can't imagine that CO2 released in New York City will find itself hovering through the forests of South America where it can be converted. The idea is highly conceptual since gas is...well gas, and thus seems omnipresent but not all gas is the same, so it holds true.

Also, something to take note on, even though plankton don't look as cool as trees, they actually convert more CO2 into oxygen than trees do. Not just pound for pound, but water (and thus plankton) covers much more of the planet surface than do trees, which do not even grow on most of the land, ie deserts, tundra, which cover HUGE spans of Africa, the US, and Asia.

Also, only1 seems to be confused.  When trees provide shade, they do not make the world cooler, they make the space underneath the tree cooler, and the tree itself gets warmer. The heat has to go somewhere, the overall temperature has not changed.