Biology Work Requirement 3 Essay, Research Paper

A

Ecological issue: Deforestation, logging

Issues:

+ Effects wildlife habitats biodiversity

+ Increases soil degradation erosion.

+ Carbon storage – leads to more Carbon dioxide in atmosphere – leads to global warming

Social- technological:

+ Can lead to global warming

+ Less use of timber to stop

Essay.

The ecological issue that I have been researching is the Deforestation. This is a major issue in Australia and the world. Forests provide the world with a range of resources the main one being timber. Timber is used in many products but mainly for building the framework of most homes. It has been accepted for years that to get the timber we need to cut down the forests, most of us lead our daily lives not knowing the implication’s that deforestation can have on the environment and society. In this eassy I will point out these implication and the causes and disadvantages of deforestation and prove that it is wrong to cut down forests.

Deforestation is the large-scale removal of forests. Why does deforestation occur?

There are a many answers to that question but the main ones are:

+ For agricultural purposes eg space for building. (overpopulation)

Trees are logged for the purpose of space. In this day and age the human race is multiplying and therefore we require more space to expand cites and build more houses. To do this world government cut down any forests in their way.

+ Industrial commercial purposes

Big industries also contribute to deforestation. EG “Macdonald’s uses 800 square miles of trees just for the paper packaging of their products”. That is an appalling amount of trees that are used just for burger wrappers. A conservation group has found that 11 million acres a year are being logged for use by commercial and property industries. If that rate keeps on going we will have no forests left by the year 2010. This is perhaps the major cause of deforestation because forests provide the world with timber, which is one of the most widely used resources in the world. Industries and governments try to make more efficient timber production so they clear existing forests and use that land to make forests plantations. In Australia 400,000 hectares of Old-growth forests are being chopped down for the production of more “valuable sawlog timber”.

Farming purposes.

Farmers need land to grow food and crops, they also need land for their cattle to eat. To get this land some farmers especially in the poorer countries need to chop down the trees in the forest that lie directly in their land or just land they want. These farmers often use a method called “Slash and Burn deforestation”. This is what it’s name suggests the slashing (logging) of trees, these trees are then burnt and the ash is retained for fertiliser. Forest’s chopped down just for cattle grazing number 15,000 square kilometres. These statistics were from 1989 that was a decade ago. No doubt the amount of land used for cattle grazing has increased in the last 10 years.

All these causes have adverse effect on the world and the environment this will be explored later in the essay.