Deforestation

Question 1

Outline the distribution of forests around the world.

Answer 1

• make up 1 third of the worlds total land area (31%) and was 47% before agricultural revolution
• annual loss of 13 million hectares
• 4 billion hectares of forest worldwide
• slightly more than half are located in the tropics and the rest in temperate regions

Question 2

What are the human factors that have effected deforestation? Where?

Answer 2

• logging
• urban development
• difficulty to enforce protection laws in developing countries results in illegal logging
• manipulation and vulnerability of forest communities
• war and conflict : civil disruption in Rwanda
• economic growth : attempts to elevate poverty
• the total economic value associated with maintaining intact forest ecosystems is often higher than the value derived from logging or conservation to farmland

South America : logging
Africa : subsistence agriculture, fuelwood collection and charcoal

Question 3

What are the natural factors that have effected deforestation? Where?

Answer 3

• ‘biotic disturbances’ : such as pest invasions and disease outbreak
• ‘abiotic disturbances’ : created by forest fires, climatic events such as hurricanes and tectonic events such as earthquakes
• annually each type of disturbance effects less than 2% of global forest cover

China - storms and blizzards in january 2008 caused great damage to 18.6 million hectares

Question 4

What are the impacts of deforestation at a local, national and global scale?

Answer 4

LOCAL

• water quality declining
• once forests are lost, most social and economic benefits are lost

REGIONAL

• income source lost
• number of species declining

GLOBAL

• destruction of natural water filtration and regulation, carbon sequencing and climate stability, erosion control and the preservation of soil quality
• loss of recreation, aesthetic and cultural values the forests may have held
• deforestation accounts for roughly 10% of the worlds carbon emissions

Question 5

Name three strategies to address deforestation

Answer 5

• implementing sustainable forest harvesting practices such as selective logging
• monitoring forests
• sourcing timber from plantations rather than native forests through afforestation

Question 6

How does the use of spacial technology assisted deforestation?

Answer 6

• evaluating the success of management strategies
• locating appropriate areas for logging operations
• determining the type of forest and measuring forest distribution

Question 7

Name and describe two global responses to deforestation.

Answer 7

1. United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF)
   Established in 2000 by the United Nations to aid in sustainable forest management by reversing the loss of forest cover through sustainable management, enhance forest based economic, social and environmental benefits and increase financial assistance for sustainable forest management
2. Global forest watch 2.0
   An online platform launched in 2014 that encore rates the use of remote sensing in the form of aerial images of the global distribution of forests in near real time for public viewing. The program allows anyone to monitor forests and post alerts if they detect there has been illegal activity.

Question 8

Name an area that is suffering from deforestation.
Outline one reason for this
Outline one impact of this

Answer 8

• Borneo, Indonesia
• Huge swaths of tropical forests and peatland (carbon rich swamps) are cleared to make way for palm oil plantations.
• increased economic benefits for locals as the result of the new plantation (positive)(economic)
• loss of native fauna and their habitat (negative)(environmental)
• 29000 square km rainforests lost between 1985-2000