Deforestation is a World Wide Problem

What do we think of when we hear deforestation? Well i'm guessing the Amazon rain forest, we are constantly hearing about the Amazon being deforested on the news, but deforestation is a really a world wide problem as well. For example 1970 Cambodia had about 70% of it's primary forests but by 2007 they only had 3.1% of their primary forests.

Here in New England we did undergo a forest transition phase prior to 1985 but we have been in a secondary phase of deforestation. Since 1985 we have lost more than 950000 acres of forest. That is just about 5% of New England's forests.

Why is the Amazon being deforested? The Amazon is being deforested for soy bean production, land grabbers and the valuable wood. China is looking to Brazil for soy beans in the wake of the US placing tarrifs on trading with China. As a result of the tariffs Brazil's farmers have began producing more soy beans but are clearing more land from the rainforest to make more fields for soy production. Deforestation has risen by 278%. World wide deforestation accounts for 24% of the earths greenhouse emissions.

Why does cutting down trees increase carbon emissions? Well trees absorb the CO2 though photosynthesis and the trees use the CO2 as food. As a result the CO2 becomes apart of the tree and is stored as wood. So when the tree dies or is cut down the carbon it has been storing gets released into the atmosphere. A tree can absorb as much as 48 pounds of CO2 a year. This means by the time the tree is 40 it has stored about 1 ton of carbon. So when we are cutting down trees that are 300 to 1,000 years old in the amazon, we are releasing anywhere between 25 and 7.5 tons of carbon into the atmosphere. In the Amazon every acre has about 200 trees. So for every acre deforested there is about 5000 to 1500 tons of carbon released into the atmosphere.

Forestry is important but how we go about it is just as important. We cant just cut down all the trees and not replant trees. It is important of the wildlife and our ecosystem. We need to practice sustainable forestry to keep our ecosystems healthy.

Citations

Gaworecki, Mike. "Deforestation has been occurring continuously in New England
     since the 1980s." Mongabay, edited by Mike Gaworecki, Mike Gaworecki , 19
     Aug. 2016, news.mongabay.com/2016/08/
     deforestation-has-been-occurring-continuously-in-new-england-since-the-1980s/.
     Accessed 16 Dec. 2019.

Olofsson, P., Holden, C. E., Bullock, E. L., & Woodcock, C. E. (2016). Time series analysis of satellite data reveals continuous deforestation of New England since the 1980s. Environmental Research Letters, 11(6), 064002. doi:10.1088/1748-9326/11/6/064002

Foster D R 1992 Land-use history (1730–1990) and vegetation dynamics in central New England, USA Ecology 80 753–72 

Drummond M A and Loveland T R 2010 Land-use pressure and a transition to forest-cover loss in the eastern United States Bioscience 60 286–98

EPA 2015 Inventory of US Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks 1990–2013 (Washington, DC: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency)