Ecosystems - Deforestation

Causes:

• Agriculture
• Logging
• Cattle ranching
• Urbanisation
• Infrastructure
• Hydroelectric projects
• Fuelwood
• Mining
• Oil extraction

Consequences:

• Loss of biodiversity
• Land degradation
• Climate change
• Mudslides
• Flooding
• Displacement of indigenous people

Western Australia

Australia has lost nearly 40% of its forests, but much of the remaining, but much of the remaining vegetation is highly fragmented.

Between 1990 and 2010, Australia lost an average of 0.17% per year.

Without clear policies to regenerate degraded forests and protect existing tracts at a massive scale, Australia stand to lose a large proportion of its remaining biodiversity.

Reasons for deforestation:

• Land clearing for agriculture. It increases the land value.
• During 1880s, broad scale vegetation removal was done for the expansion of sheep and wheat industry.

Consequences:

• 7% of the agriculture area of western Australia is suffering from saline water draining for deforested areas which affect downstream water quality. When forests are cut, the salinity of the soil can greatly increase.
• Studies in Australia's wet tropics show that soils have limited capacity to recover from deforestation. Estimates say that land degradation costs about $1bn annually.

The Congo Rainforest

In the Democratic Republic of Congo alone, 40 million people depend on the rainforest.

Satellite pictures reveal that deforestation has fallen by a third since 2000 but still losing 2000 km² a year. Schemes from the UN offer financial incentives to keep the forest in tact.

Reasons for deforestation:

• Transport infrastructure for logging
• Unregulated mining
• Fuelwood

Consequences:

• By 2050 forest clearance in the DRC will release a total of up to 24.4 billion tonnes of CO2.
• There has been a more than 60% drop in the region's forest elephant in less than a decade.