Question

How does deforestation tie into climate change?

Answer 1

• Deforestation is an important factor in global climate change. It is well known that deforestation is a big problem in the world today, with hundreds and even thousands of vulnerable forest being cut down both for tinder and to make way for arable farmland for cows and other livestock.
• Not only this could lead to an increase in the rate of deforestation quickly and easily lead to the loss of many different species of plant, tree and animal, a lot of which are yet to be discovered it could also have a devastating effect on the climate.
• One of the main reasons for this is because forests all over the globe are, naturally, so-called ‘carbon sinks’, or areas of natural environment such as oceans that can take carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and convert it into oxygen that we and other animals can safely breathe.
• By cutting down huge areas of forest, therefore, without replacing the trees that we remove, we are causing an inadvertent change in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which can have a huge impact on the rest of the world.
• Forests are vital for human and animal lives as they are home to millions of species, prevent soil erosion, play a crucial role in water cycle by returning water vapor back into the atmosphere, absorb greenhouse gases that fuel global warming, keep soil moist by blocking the sun, produce oxygen and absorb carbon dioxide.
• If current rate of deforestation continue, there will be no more rainforests in 100 years. It is estimated that due to cutting and burning of forests every year, more than 1.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide are released into the atmosphere
  
• Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, which means that it traps infrared rays from the sun and keeps heat in the Earth’s atmosphere.
• Whilst for the most part this is a good thing -without greenhouse gases it would be a lot more difficult for life to be sustained on the Earth’s surface ,more and more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere means more and more heat is being trapped, raising the average temperature of the world (otherwise known as global warming) which is having a huge number of knock-on effects.
• Water vapor is another greenhouse gas that keeps heat from the sun trapped in the Earth’s atmosphere and helps maintain a temperature at which life can flourish on our planet. However, deforestation also affects the amount of this in the air.
• Studies have shown that deforestation has contributed to the amount of water vapor in the air and, over just a few years, the amount of water vapor present has increased by four percent. Besides increasing the temperature of the Earth’s surface and atmosphere, this also has knock-on effects for weather patterns.
• The water cycle is very important for not only us, but for species of animal and plant all over the globe. Trees contribute a great deal to the water cycle, and forests are particularly useful for regulating the way that rain is recycled back into the atmosphere to be rained down once again many miles away.
• By chopping down hundreds of thousands of trees every year and never replacing them, we are affecting the natural water cycle of the world, which means an increase in the pollution present in the water that now rains down on places all over the world.
• Besides causing problems in the waterways because of an increase in soil and pesticides, for instance, deforestation has also been directly linked to ocean acidification, or the increase in the average pH of the oceans. Oceans become more acidic when more carbon dioxide is present.
• Because so much more carbon dioxide is now present in our air, not only because fewer trees are converting it into oxygen, but also because the processes involved in deforestation cause a lot of fossil fuels to be burned, it is gradually seeping into the oceans, raising the average pH and killing off many species of plant and animal life.
• Deforestation by humans is causing all of these necessary functions to be lessened, and hence damaging the atmosphere even further.