What does pH level have to do with deforestation?

Question

ok im suppose to be a "chemist" for a project and my environmental problem is deforestation!!

my questions are:

what chemicals are used ur problem: well i dont think there are any!

Describe the pH range and how it is effected..

and the rest of the questions are about pH level...

i have no clue what pH is and i dont understand the definition. please help me!!!

i could really use a hand

and if u have any extra info on this feel free to post!

Thanks

Answer 1

get off of YA and read your textbook.  Obviously your teacher wouldn't have assigned something you don't have the materials for.

At least try before people have to do your homework for you.

Answer 2

pH describes either the acidity or bascisity of something.  Plants need different pH's to grow well, so if something changes the pH of the soil the plants may not do well any longer.

pH is actually the negative log of the concentration of the hydrogen ion activity.  Here's a chart that may make it easier, http://staff.jccc.net/PDECELL/chemistry/...

Look up deforestation and chemicals on the internet.  Then you can look up the pH values of the chemicals and determine how they might affect the soil.

Answer 3

pH is the measure of H+ (hydrogen ions).  It measures the acidity and alkalinity (or basicity) of the soil.  pH is on a scale from 0 to 14, with 0 being very acidic and 14 being very basic.  A pH of 7 is neutral.  The scale is logarithmic which just means that for every unit you increase (like, from pH 7 to pH 8) the acidity (concentration of H ions) actually increases 10 times.  If you were to increase from pH 7 to 9, there would be a 100x increase in H ions, 7 to 10 would be 1000x, and so on.  Of course, this also holds true in reverse, a decrease in pH from 6 to 5 would decrease the concentration of H ions 10x.  pH values have no units.

The pH of the soil can vary depending on many factors, such as what rocks are under the soil and even what plants grow there.  Plants affect the pH (and other properties) of the soil, and at the same time the pH of the soil (and other properties) affect what type of plants can grow there.  We say they are correlated, they depend on each other.  Generally, healthy soils have a pH values around 7.  Some plants will grow on more acidic and more basic soils too.  The soil pH controls the nutrients that are available to plants in the soil, which in turn controls the health of plants.  Generally, soils with a pH less than 5.0 will limit the availability of nutrients to plants.  Too basic of a soil can also be detrimental to plant growth.

In areas where deforestation is occurring, the soils have little vegetation and vegetation cover.  If it rains a lot (as it does in the tropics), then the rain will soak into the ground and leach nutrients from the soil, leaving a higher concentration of H ions.  This can naturally happen over thousands of years, but when you take away the forest, it speeds up the acidification process.  When plants are present, much of the water is taken in by the roots and nutrients are not leached away.  In an area that is deforested, and now acidic due to leaching, re-growth of plants is less or non-existent which poses problems.  The reason the forest was burned was for agriculture, so crops will no longer be able to grow and the soil is also ruined for natural plants to grow back.

BTW, soil is composed of MANY chemicals!  You just wouldn't think it huh?!   In fact, there's a whole discipline of science just dedicated to soil chemistry.  There are lots of chemical reactions occurring during the soil acidification process that happens when the land is deforested.  These can be pretty complicated.  Even without knowing all these complicated reactions, I hope you can see which chemicals are most important in explaining pH?

I hope this helps and doesn't come too late.