Deforestation is the permanent destruction of forests to make land available for other uses. Forests play an important role in the water and carbon cycles by absorbing and releasing water and carbon slowly over time. Removing forests disrupts these cycles. Deforestation reduces the number of trees that store carbon, allowing more carbon dioxide to remain in the atmosphere and contribute to climate change. It also destroys habitats for many living things. Common causes of deforestation include converting land to agriculture, uncontrolled fires, overharvesting of fuelwood, mining, and climate change itself.

1. Deforestation
DEFORESTATION

2. What is it?
Deforestation is the permanent destruction of
forests in order to make the land available for other
uses.

3. How it affects the
water cycle
Forests hold a huge quantity of water in both the
trees themselves, but also in the soil and d in
the leaf.
Then trees and soils release water slowly. It
feed rivers lakes and aquifers.
So the forest is a moderator, absorbing like a
sponge excess on rainy days reducing floods;
and releasing slowly allowing a river to flow in
the dry season. The canopy also keeps the soil
moist during the hot sunny days. The
transpiration keeps the humidity up even in dry
times. If the forest is big enough, that
transpiration can even trigger new summer
showers.
Remove the forest and you remove the
moderating effect.

4. Habitat Destruction
All living things affect the living and nonliving things around them.
For example: earthworms make burrows and worm casts, which affect the
soil and therefore the plants growing in it. Rabbit fleas carry the virus
which causes Myxomatosis, so they can affect the size of rabbit
population and perhaps the size of the fox population if the foxes depends
on rabbits for food.

6. What is the carbon cycle?
The carbon cycle is the circulation and transformation of carbon back and forth
between living things and the environment. Carbon is an element, something that
cannot be broken down into a simpler substance. Other examples of elements are
oxygen, nitrogen, calcium, iron, and hydrogen. Carbon compounds are present in
living things like plants and animals and in nonliving things like rocks and soil.
Carbon compounds can exist as solids (such as diamonds or coal), liquids (such
as crude oil), or gases (such as carbon dioxide). Carbon is often referred to as the
"building block of life" because living things are based on carbon and carbon
compounds.

7. How does deforestation affects the carbon cycle?
Because plants are one of the main storage areas for carbon, deforestation
reduces the number of trees, and therefore, more carbon (in the form of carbon
dioxide) remains in the atmosphere and disrupts the normal carbon cycle. More
carbon dioxide traps more of the heat from the sun in the atmosphere, increasing
the greenhouse effect and leading to climate change.

8. More about the carbon cycle...
The amount of carbon on the earth and in Earth's atmosphere is fixed, but that fixed amount of carbon is
dynamic, always changing into different carbon compounds and moving between living and nonliving
things. Carbon is released to the atmosphere from what are called "carbon sources" and stored in plants,
animals, rocks, and water in what are called "carbon sinks." This process occurs in a number of steps. In
the first step, through photosynthesis (the process by which plants capture the sun's energy and use it to
grow), plants take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and release oxygen. The carbon dioxide is
converted into carbon compounds that make up the body of the plant, which are stored in both the
aboveground parts of the plants (shoots and leaves), and the belowground parts (roots). In the next step,
animals eat the plants, breath in the oxygen, and exhale carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide created by
animals is then available for plants to use in photosynthesis. Carbon stored in plants that are not eaten by
animals eventually decomposes after the plants die, and is either released into the atmosphere or stored
in the soil.
Large quantities of carbon can be released to the atmosphere through geologic processes like volcanic
eruptions and other natural changes that destabilize carbon sinks. For example, increasing temperatures
can cause carbon dioxide to be released from the ocean.

9. Causes of deforestation and
forest degradation
Conversion of forests for other land uses, including pulp,
palm, and soy plantations, pastures, settlements, roads
and infrastructure.

10. Forest fires: Each year, fires burn millions of
hectares of forest worldwide. Fires are a part of
nature but degraded forests are particularly
vulnerable. These include heavily logged rainforests,
forests on peat soils, or where forest fires have been
suppressed for years allowing unnatural
accumulation of vegetation that makes the fire burn
more intensely. The resulting loss has wide-reaching
consequences on biodiversity, climate, and the
economy.

11. Fuelwood harvesting: Over-harvesting for domestic use
or for commercial trade in charcoal significantly damages
forests.
Mining: The impact of mining on tropical forests is
growing due to rising demand and high mineral prices.
Mining projects are often accompanied by major
infrastructure construction, such as roads, railway lines
and power stations, putting further pressure on forests
and freshwater ecosystems.

12. Climate change: Forest loss is both a cause and an
effect of our changing climate. Climate change can
damage forests, for instance by drying out tropical
rainforests and increasing fire damage in boreal
forests. Inside forests, climate change is already
harming biodiversity, a threat that is likely to
increase.