Deforestation

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Deforestation

Deforestation is the conversion of forested areas to non-forested. Historically, this meant conversion to grassland or to its artificial counterpart, grainfields; however, the Industrial Revolution added urbanization and technological uses. Generally this removal or destruction of significant areas of forest cover has resulted in a degraded environment with reduced biodiversity. In developing countries, massive deforestation has accompanied mankind's progress since the Neolithic, and has shaped climate and geography.

Deforestation (whether deliberate or unintended) is the result of the removal of trees without sufficient reforestation. There are many causes, ranging from extremely slow forest degradation to sudden and catastrophic wildfires. Deforestation can be the result of the deliberate removal of forest cover for agriculture or urban development, or it can be an unintentional consequence of uncontrolled grazing (which can prevent the natural regeneration of young trees). The combined effect of grazing and fires can be a major cause of deforestation in dry areas. In addition to the direct effects brought about by forest removal, indirect effects caused by edge effects and habitat fragmentation can greatly magnify the effects of deforestation.

While tropical rainforest deforestation has attracted most attention, tropical dry forests are being lost at a substantially higher rate, primarily as an outcome of slash-and-burn techniques used by shifting cultivators.

Impact on the Environment

Deforestation alters the hydrologic cycle, potentially increasing or decreasing the amount of water in the soil and groundwater and the moisture in the atmosphere. Forests support considerable biodiversity. Forests are valuable habitat for wild mushrooms and medicinal conservation and the recharge of aquifers. With forest bioptopes a major, irreplacable source of new drugs (like taxol) and genetic variations (such as crop resistance) is lost irretrievably.

Shrinking forest cover lessens the landscape's capacity to intercept, retain and transport precipitation. Instead of trapping precipitation, which then percolates to groundwater systems, deforested areas become sources of surface water runoff, which moves much faster than subsurface flows. That quicker transport of surface water can translate into flash flooding and more localized floods than would occur with the forest cover. Deforestation also contributes to decreased evapotranspiration, which lessens atmospheric moisture which in some cases affects precipitation levels downwind from the deforested area, as water is not recycled to downwind forests, but is lost in runoff and returns directly to the oceans; in deforested north and northwest China, the average annual precipitation decreased by one third between the 1950s and the 1980s ^*.

Long-term gains can be obtained by managing forest lands sustainably to maintain both forest cover and provide a biodegrable renewable resource. Forests are also important stores of organic carbon, and forests can extract carbon dioxide and pollutants from the air, thus contributing to biosphere stability and probably relevant to the greenhouse effect. Forests are also valued for their aesthetic beauty and as a cultural resource and tourist attraction.

Definition of deforestation

Deforestation is the loss or continual degradation of forest habitat due to either natural or human related causes. Agriculture, urban sprawl, unsustainable forestry practices, mining, and petroleum exploration all contribute to human caused deforestation. Natural deforestation can be linked to tsunamis, forest fires, volcanic eruptions, glaciation and desertification. The effects of human related deforestation can be mitigated through environmentally sustainable practices that reduce permanent destruction of forests or even act to preserve and rehabilitate disrupted forestland. (See Reforestation and Treeplanting )

The term deforestation is often the source of disagreement between various interest groups. Conservation groups often use broad definition while groups seeking to maintain the status quo often use a narrow definition.

Deforestation defined broadly can include not only conversion to non-forest, but also degradation that reduces forest quality - the density and structure of the trees, the ecological services supplied, the biomass of plants and animals, the species diversity and the genetic diversity. Narrow definition of deforestation is: the removal of forest cover to an extent that allows for alternative land use. The United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) uses a broad definition of deforestation, while the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) uses a narrow definition.

Definitions can also be grouped as those which refer to changes in land cover and those which refer to changes in land use.

Land cover measurements often use a percent of cover to determine deforestation. This type of definition has the advantage in that large areas can be easily measured, for example from satellite photos. A forest cover removal of 90% may still be considered forest in some cases. Under this definition areas that may have few values of a natural forest such as plantations and even urban or suburban areas may be considered forest.

Land use definitions measure deforestation by a change in land use. This definition may consider areas to be forest that are not commonly considered as such. An area can be lacking trees but still considered a forest. It may be a land designated for afforestation or an area designated administratively as forest.

Use of the term deforestation

The term deforestation has been used to refer to fuel wood cutting, commercial logging and the slash and burn technique, a component of some shifting cultivation agricultural systems. It is also used to describe forest clearing for annual crops, for grazing, and establishment of industrial forest plantations. The meaning of the term is ambiguous enough and so charged with emotion that the use of a more precise term might be better suited in specific cases. Related terms are forest decline, forest fragmentation and forest degradation, loss of forest cover and land use conversion.

Causes of deforestation

Present causes

While short-sighted, market-driven forestry practices are often one of the leading cause of forest degradation, the principal human-related causes of deforestation are agriculture and livestock grazing, urban sprawl, and mining and petroleum extraction. Causes include demand for farm land and fuel wood. Underlining causes include poverty, lack of reform. The causes of deforestation are complex and often differ in each forest and country. Government policies, such as ones in Brazil, make it a priority to resettle some of the country's numerous landless people. The largest cause as of 2006 is slash-and-burn activity in tropical forests. Slash-and-burn is a method sometimes used by shifting cultivators to create short term yields from marginal soils. When practiced repeatedly, or without intervening fallow periods, the nutrient poor soils may be exhausted or eroded to an unproductive state. Slash-and-burn techniques are used by native populations of over 200 million people worldwide.

Theories of deforestation

Three schools of thought exist with regards to the causes of deforestation - the Impoverishment school, which believes that the major cause of deforestation is "the growing number of poor", the Neoclassical school which believes that the major cause is "open-access property rights" and the Political-ecology school which believes that the major cause of deforestation is that the "capitalist investors crowd out peasants". The Impoverishment school sees smallholders as the principal agents of deforestation, the Neoclassical school sees various agents, and the Political-ecology school sees capitalist entrepreneurs as the major agents of deforestation. Actual data support the first two theories as widespread numerical impacts.

History and historical causes

See timeline of environmental events.

Prehistory

Deforestation has been practiced by humans for thousands of years. Fire was first tool that allowed humans to modify the landscape. The first evidence of deforestation shows up in the Mesolithic. Fire was probably used to drive game into more accessible areas. With the advent of agriculture fire became the prime tool to clear land for crops. In Europe there is little solid evidence before 5000 BP. Mesolithic foragers used fire to create openings for red deer and wild boar. On Great Britain shade tolerant species like oak and ash are replaced in the pollen record by hazels, brambles, grasses and nettles. Removal of the forests led to decreased transpiration resulting in the formation of upland peat bogs. Widespread decreased in elm pollen across Europe between 6400-6300 BP and 5200-5000 BP, starting in southern Europe and gradually moving north to Great Britain, may represent land clearing by fire at the onset of Neolithic agriculture.

Pre-industrial history

The historic silting of ports along the southern coasts of Asia Minor (e.g. Clarus, and the examples of Ephesus, Priene and Miletus, where harbors had to be abandoned because of the silt deposited by the Meander) and in coastal Syria during the last centuries BC, and the famous silting up of the harbor for Bruges, which moved port commerce to Antwerp, all follow periods of increased settlement growth (and apparently of deforestation) in the river basins of their hinterlands. In early medieval Riez in upper Provence, alluvial silt from two small rivers raised the riverbeds and widened the floodplain, which slowly buried the Roman settlement in alluvium and gradually moved new construction to higher ground; concurrently the headwater valleys above Riez were being opened to pasturage.

A typical progress trap is that cities are built in a woody area providing wood for some industry (e.g. shipbuilding, pottery) which starts consuming it so fast – and without proper replanting – that it becomes impossible to obtain it close enough to remain competitive, leading to the city's abandonment, as happened repeatedly in Ancient Asia Minor. Especially the combination of mining and metallurgy went along this self-destructive path.

Meanwhile most of the population remaining active in (or indirectly dependend on) the agricultural sector, the main pressure in most areas remained land clearing for crop and cattle farming; fortunately enough wild green was usually left standing (and partially used, e.g. to collect firewood, timber and fruits, or to graze pigs) for wildlife to remain viable, and the hunting privileges of the elite (nobility and higher clergy) often protected significant woodlands.

Major parts in the spread (and thus more durable growth) of the population were played by monastical 'pioneering' (especially by the benedictine and cistercian orders) and some feudal lords actively attracting farmers to settle (and become tax payers) by offering relatively good legal and fiscal conditions – even when they did so to launch or encourage cities, there always was an agricultural belt around and even quite some within the walls. When on the other hand demography took a real blow by such causes as the Black Death or devastating warfare (e.g. Genghis Khan's Mongol hords in eastern and central Europe, Thirty Years' War in Germany) this could lead to settlements being abandoned, leaving land to be reclaimed by nature.

The large-scale building of wooden sail ships by European (coastal) naval owers since the 15th century for exploration, colonization, slave – and other trade on the high seas and (often related) naval warfare (the failed invasion of England by the Spanish Armada in 1559 and the battle of Lepanto 1577 are early cases of huge waste of prime timber; each of Nelson's Royal navy war ships at Trafalgar had required 6000 mature oaks) and piracy meant that whole woody regions were over-harvested, as in Spain, were this contributed to the paradoxical weakening of the domestic economy since Columbus' discovery of America made the colonial activities (plundering, mining, cattle, plantations, trade ...) predominant.

In Changes in the Land (1983), William Cronon collected 17th century New England Englishmen's reports of increased seasonal flooding during the time that the forests were initially cleared, though no connection was made at the time.

Industrial pressure

The massive use of charcoal on an industrial scale was a new acceleration of the onslaught on western forests; even in Stuart England, the relatively primitive production of charcoal has already reached an impressive level.

Deforestation today

Growing worldwide demand for wood to be used for fire wood or in construction, paper and furniture - as well as clearing land for commercial and industrial development (including road construction) have combined with growing local populations and their demands for agricultural expansion and wood fuel to endanger ever larger forest areas.

Agricultural development schemes in Mexico, Brazil and Indonesia moved large populations into the rainforest zone, further increasing deforestation rates. One fifth of the world's tropical rainforest was destroyed between 1960 and 1990. Estimates of deforestation of tropical forest for the 1990s range from ca. 55,630 km² to ca. 120,000 km² each year. At this rate, all tropical forests may be gone by the year 2090.

Brazil

In Brazil the rate of deforestation is apparently driven by commodity prices. Recent development of a new variety of soybean has lead to displacement of beef ranches and slash and burn farmers which in turn move further into the forest.

Indonesia

There are Large areas of forest in Indonesia that are being lost as native forest is cleared by large multi-national pulp companies and being replaced by plantations.

United States

Upon arrival European-Americans began clearing large areas of forest for wood and agriculture. Beginning in about 1850 farm land began to be abandoned because of soil exhaustion and competition from the mid-west. Also, mechanization allowed land formerly used as pastures for horses to revert to forest. From 1850 to about 1920 the amount of forest land in the United States actually increased. Today the trend in forest cover increase has reversed as urban sprawl causes conversion of forest as the forest is transformed to suburbs.

Environmental effects

Atmospheric pollution

Deforestation is often cited as one of the major causes of the enhanced greenhouse effect. Trees and other plants remove carbon (in the form of carbon dioxide) from the atmosphere during the process of photosynthesis. Both the decay and burning of wood releases much of this stored carbon back to the atmosphere. A.J.Yeomans asserts in Priority One that overnight a stable forest releases exactly the same quantity of carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere. Others state that mature forests are net sinks of CO₂ (see Carbon dioxide sink and Carbon cycle).

Wildlife

Some forests are rich in biological diversity. Deforestation can cause the destruction of the habitats that support this biological diversity - thus causing population shifts and extinctions.

Hydrologic cycle and water resources

Trees, and plants in general, affect the hydrological cycle in a number of significant ways:

their canopies intercept precipitation, some of which evaporates back to the atmosphere (canopy interception);
their litter, stems and trunks slow down surface runoff;
their roots create macropores - large conduits - in the soil that increase infiltration of water;
they reduce soil moisture via transpiration;
their litter and other organic residue change soil properties that affect the capacity of soil to store water.

As a result, the presence or absence of trees can change the quantity of water on the surface, in the soil or groundwater, or in the atmosphere. This in turn changes erosion rates and the availability of water for either ecosystem functions or human services.

The forest may have little impact on flooding in the case of large rainfall events, which overwhelm the storage capacity of forest soil if the soils are at or close to saturation.

Soil erosion

Deforestation generally increases rates of soil erosion, by increasing the amount of runoff and reducing the protection of the soil from tree litter. This can be an advantage in excessively leached tropical rain forest soils. Forestry operations themselves also increase erosion through the development of roads and the use of mechanized equipment.

China's Loess Plateau was cleared of forest millennia ago. Since then it has been eroding, creating dramatic incised valleys, and providing the sediment that gives the Yellow River its yellow color and that causes the flooding of the river in the lower reaches (hence the river's nick-name 'China's sorrow').

Removal of trees does not always increase erosion rates. In certain regions of southwest US, shrubs and trees have been encroaching on grassland. The trees themselves enhance the loss of grass between tree canopies. The bare intercanopy areas become highly erodible. The US Forest Service, in Bandelier National Monument for example, is studying how to restore the former ecosystem, and reduce erosion, by removing the trees.

Landslides

Tree roots bind soil together, and if the soil is sufficiently shallow they act to keep the soil in place by also binding with underlying bedrock. Tree removal on steep slopes with shallow soil thus increases the risk of landslides, which can threaten people living nearby.

Controlling deforestation

Farming

New methods are being developed to farm more food crops on less farm land, such as high-yield hybrid crops, greenhouse, autonomous building gardens, and hydroponics. The reduced farm land is then dependent on massive chemical inputs to maintain necessary yields. In cyclic agriculture, cattle are grazed on farm land that is resting and rejuvenating. Cyclic agriculture actually increases the fertility of the soil. Selective over farming can also increase the nutrients by releasing such nutrients from the previously inert subsoil. The constant release of nutrients from the constant exposure of subsoil by slow and gentle erosion is a process that has been ongoing for billions of years. Slash-and-burn agriculture has recently needed re-evalution as it appears to be more sustainable than originally believed.

Forest management

Efforts to stop or slow deforestation have been attempted for many centuries because it has long been known that deforestation can cause environmental damage sufficient in some cases to cause societies to collapse. In Tonga, paramount rulers developed policies designed to prevent conflicts between short-term gains from converting forest to farmland and long-term problems forest loss would cause, whilst during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Tokugawa Japan the shoguns developed a highly sophisticated system of long-term planning to stop and even reverse deforestation of the preceding centuries through substituting timber by other products and more efficient use of land that had been farmed for many centuries. In sixteenth century Germany landowners also developed silviculture to deal with the problem of deforestation. However, these policies tend to be limited to environments with good rainfall, no dry season and very young soils (through volcanism or glaciation). This is because on older and less fertile soils trees grow too slowly for silviculture to be economic, whilst in areas with a strong dry season there is always a risk of forest fires destroying a tree crop before it matures.

Afforestation

Today, in China, where large scale destruction of forests has occurred, the government has required that every able-bodied citizen between the ages of 11 and 60 plant three to five trees per year or do the equivalent amount of work in other forest services. The government claims that at least 1000 million trees have been planted in China every year since 1982. In western countries, increasing consumer demand for wood products that have been produced and harvested in a sustainable manner are causing forest landowners and forest industries to become increasingly accountable for their forest management and timber harvesting practices.

The Arbor Day Foundation's Rain Forest Rescue program is a charity that helps to prevent deforestation. The charity uses donated money to buy up and preserve rainforest land before the lumber companies can buy it. The Arbor Day Foundation then protects the land from deforestation. This also locks in the way of life of the primitive tribes living on the forest land.

Sources and references

BBC TV series 2005 on the history of geological factors shaping human history
A Natural History of Europe - 2005 co-production including BBC and ZDF
Whitney, Gordon G. 1996. From Coastal Wilderness to Fruited Plain : A History of Environmental Change in Temperate North America from 1500 to the Present. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 052157658X
Williams, Michael. 2003. Deforesting the Earth. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. ISBN 0226899268
Wunder, Sven. 2000. The Economics of Deforestation: The Example of Ecuador. Macmillan Press, London. ISBN 0333731468
FAO / CIFOR report. Forests and Floods: Drowning in Fiction or Thriving on Facts?

External links: historic deforestation

Wang Hongchang, "Deforestation and Desiccation in China :A Preliminary Study"
S. Riehl, "Late Bronze Age Tell Atchana" Archaeobotany and siltation at Tell Atchana (Tübingen University)
"FAO-Forest Resources Assessment" Change in extent of forest and other wooded land 1990-2005

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