What Is Deforestation? Causes, Consequences

What Is Deforestation?

Deforestation refers to the decrease in forest areas across the world that are lost for other uses such as agricultural croplands, urbanization, or mining activities. Greatly accelerated by human activities since around 1960, deforestation has been badly affecting natural ecosystems and the climate. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization estimates the annual rate of deforestation to be around 1.3 million km squared per decade.

The Causes of Deforestation: Why Is Deforestation Happening?

Multiple factors, either of human or natural origin, cause deforestation. Natural factors include natural forest fires or parasite-caused diseases which can result in deforestation. Nevertheless, human activities are among the main causes of global deforestation. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, the expansion of agriculture caused nearly 80% of global deforestation, with the construction of infrastructures such as roads or dams, together with mining activities and urbanization, making up the remaining causes of deforestation.

 

Agriculture is the Number 1 Cause of Deforestation (80%)

Why is deforestation happening? According to the FAO, agriculture causes around 80% of deforestation. And how does agriculture cause so much deforestation? According to the same report, 33% of agriculture-caused deforestation is a consequence of subsistence agriculture – such as local peasant agriculture in developing countries

 

Commercial or industrial agriculture (field crops and livestock) cause around 40% of forest loss – in the search for space to grow food, fibers, or biofuel. It is also particularly interesting to note livestock is believed to be responsible for about 14% of global deforestation. The main reasons why have to do with the large areas require both to raise livestock but also to grow its soy-based food.

How wolves changed rivers

In 1995 wolves were sent to  Yellowstone National Park after being captured in Canada to try and get some wolves to breed. They just appeared as they traveled. The numbers of deer in the park had risen incredibly fast as there was nothing to hunt them. So the deers grazed and they grazed some more. So most of the vegetation had gone from the park. However, when the wolves came back they started to kill the deer which kept them away from certain places such as the valleys and the gorges.

And so those places immediately started to regenerate. The height of the trees quintupled in just six years. Bare valley sides quickly became forests, and as soon as that happened the birds started moving in. The number of beavers greatly increased because they ate trees. And the beavers were engineers and what they did is they created niches for other creatures. And the dams they built in the rivers provided habitats for otters, ducks, muskrats, fish, reptiles, and amphibians.

The wolves killed coyotes and as a result of that, the number of rabbits and mice began to rise, which meant more hawks, more weasels. More foxes, more badgers. Ravens and bald eagles came down to feed on the wolves' leftovers, and bears fell on it too so their population began to rise, partly too because of the growing number of berries on the regenerating shrubs. And then the bears had enough strength to hunt the deer and reinforce the wolves.

However, the rivers were going into straighter lines staying in place and not eroding as much anymore, More permanent pools formed. The rivers changed because of wolves. The reason was that the regenerating forest stabilized the banks so that they collapsed less often so that the rivers became more fixed in their course. And because of the regenerated vegetation on the valley sides, there was less soil erosion because the vegetation stabilized that as well. However now you can see the chain reaction, every time we chop down a tree animals are driven away.

 

So now you can see what chopping down a tree does to a natural ecosystem. It makes everything unstable. So I believe that if we can avoid chopping down entire forests or doing it in a safer way we can save ecosystems. 

Wildfires

 Wildfires

What Is A Wildfire

Wildfires are any unplanned fires that burn in forests and other wildlands, such as shrub or grass communities. They’re a powerful natural force we must fully understand and respect in order to best help control them. Nearly nine out of ten wildfires nationwide are caused by humans and could have been prevented.

How Wildfires Start

On a hot summer day, when drought conditions peak, something as small as a spark from a train car's wheel striking the track can ignite a raging wildfire. Sometimes, fires occur naturally, ignited by heat from the sun or a lightning strike. However, the majority of wildfires are the result of human carelessness.

­Everything has a temperature at which it will burst into flames. This temperature is called a material's flashpoint. Wood's flashpoint is 572 degrees Fahre­nheit (300 C). When wood is heated to this temperature, it releases hydrocarbon gases that mix with oxygen in the air, combust and create fire.

There are three components needed for ignition and combustion to occur. A fire requires fuel ­to burn, air to supply oxygen, and a heat source to bring the fuel up to ignition temperature. Heat, oxygen, and fuel form the fire triangle. Fire­fighters often talk about the fire triangle when they are trying to put out ablaze. The idea is that if they can take away any one of the pillars of the triangle, they can control and ultimately extinguish the fire.

­After combustion occurs and a fire begins to burn, there are several factors that determine how the fire spreads. These three factors include fuel, weather, and topography. Depending on these factors, a fire can quickly fizzle or turn into a raging blaze that scorches thousands of acres.

Fuel Loads

Wi­ldfires spread based on the type and quantity of fuel that surrounds it. Fuel can include everything from trees, underbrush, and dry grassy fields to homes. The amount of flammable material that surrounds a fire is referred to as the fuel load. Fuel load is measured by the amount of available fuel per unit area, usually tons per acre.

A small fuel load will cause a fire to burn and spread slowly, with low intensity. If there is a lot of fuel, the fire will burn more intensely, causing it to spread faster. The faster it heats the material around it, the faster those materials can ignite. The dryness of the fuel can also affect the behavior of the fire. When the fuel is very dry, it is consumed much faster and creates a fire that is much more difficult to contain.

Weathers Role In wildfires

Weather plays a major role in the birth, growth, and death of a wildfire. Drought leads to extremely favorable conditions for wildfires, and winds aid a wildfire's progress weather can spur the fire to move faster and engulf more land. It can also make the job of fighting the fire even more difficult. There are three weather ingredients that can affect wildfires: Temperature, moisture, and wind.

As mentioned before, temperature affects the sparking of wildfires, because heat is one of the three pillars of the fire triangle. The sticks, trees, and underbrush on the ground receive radiant heat from the sun, which heats and dries potential fuels. Warmer temperatures allow for fuels to ignite and burn faster, adding to the rate at which a wildfire spreads. For this reason, wildfires tend to rage in the afternoon, when temperatures are at their hottest.

Wind probably has the biggest impact on a wildfire's behavior. It also the most unpredictable factor. Winds supply the fire with additional oxygen, further dry potential fuel, and push the fire across the land at a faster rate.

While wind can help the fire to spread, moisture works against the fire. Moisture, in the form of humidity and precipitation, can slow the fire down and reduce its intensity. Potential fuels can be hard to ignite if they have high levels of moisture because the moisture absorbs the fire's heat. When the humidity is low, meaning that there is a low amount of water vapor in the air, wildfires are more likely to start. The higher the humidity, the less likely the fuel is to dry and ignite.

Since moisture can lower the chances of a wildfire igniting, precipitation has a direct impact on fire prevention. When the air becomes saturated with moisture, it releases moisture in the form of rain. Rain and other precipitation raise the amount of moisture in fuels, which suppresses any potential wildfires from breaking out.

Fires On The Mountain

The third big influence on wildfire behavior is the lay of the land or topography. Although it remains virtually unchanged, unlike fuel and weather, topography can either aid or hinder wildfire progression. The most important factor in topography as it relates to wildfire is the slope.

Unlike humans, fires usually travel uphill much faster than downhill. The steeper the slope, the faster the fire travels. Fires travel in the direction of the ambient wind, which usually flows uphill. Additionally, the fire is able to preheat the fuel further up the hill because the smoke and heat are rising in that direction. Conversely, once the fire has reached the top of a hill, it must struggle to come back down because it is not able to preheat the downhill fuel as well as the uphill.

In conclusion, I hope we can all work together in lighting fires in a safe way, as if we don’t there will be millions of dollars every year in damage, which could be going towards schooling or cancer or something important, rather than just using it to repair from mistakes.