Abstract Deforestation and forest degradation represent a significant fraction of the annual worldwide human-induced emission of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, the main source of biodiversity Author: Paulo Moutinho · Deforestation Problem Research Paper. Deforestation is the cutting down of trees for the purpose of converting the land to none forest use. Deforestation involves cutting down trees and stumps completely or partially for a variety of reasons. The major reason why people cut down trees is for fuel use whereby the cut down trees are used as a source of energy, a phenomenon that is very common The word deforestation is a wide-ranging term to cover the cutting, use, and elimination of trees. Subsumed under it are other activities like fire, domestic heating and cooking, smelting metals, making ceramics, construction of shelter and implements, and the creation of new land for cultivation and grazing
Research Paper On Deforestation | WOW Essays
View sample deforestation research paper, deforestation research paper. Browse other research paper examples and check the list of history research paper topics for more inspiration.
If you need a history research paper written according to all the academic standards, you can always turn to our experienced writers for help, deforestation research paper.
This is how your paper can get deforestation research paper A! Feel free to contact our custom writing service for professional assistance. We offer high-quality assignments for reasonable rates. Humans have been felling, using, and burning trees for about half a million years, and the forests have receded as human populations have grown and spread.
The clearing of woodlands for agriculture has been the leading cause of deforestation, but the harvesting of timber as a raw material and fuel has also played deforestation research paper significant role.
The word deforestation is a wide-ranging term to cover the cutting, use, and elimination of trees. Subsumed under it are other activities like fire, domestic heating and cooking, smelting metals, making ceramics, construction of shelter and implements, deforestation research paper, and the creation of new land for cultivation and grazing. Deforestation is so basic that it is woven into the very fabric of human existence, and hence of world history.
There is much uncertainty about the pace and locale of deforestation during past and even present ages, deforestation research paper. This revolves around the multiple meanings given to three basic questions. What exactly is a forest? What was the extent and density of trees at any past given time?
Pragmatically one may say that a forest can range from a closed-canopy tree cover to a more open woodland, which affects deforestation research paper. Deforestation is used loosely to deforestation research paper any process that modifies the original tree cover, from clear-felling to thinning to occasional fire. It should not be forgotten, however, deforestation research paper, that forests regrow, often with surprising speed and vigor, and forest regrowth has occurred whenever pressures on it have been relaxed.
This was observed after the Mayan population collapse around CE, after the Great Plague in Europe afterafter the initial European deforestation research paper with the Americas inand with agricultural land abandonment in the post eastern United States and in post Europe. Because crop domestication and the increase and spread of people occurred in largely forested environments, ancient societies everywhere had a cumulatively severe impact on forests.
In Europe, Mesolithic cultures c. The succeeding Neolithic agriculturalists c. In order to vary diet, they also ran large herds of pigs, sheep, and especially cattle in woodland and cleared pastures for their meat, milk, blood, and possibly cheese.
It was a stable, sedentary society that made full use of the many products of the forest, one calculation being that on average it required 20 hectares of forest land to sustain one person in fuel, grazing, constructional timber, and food. In Asia, complex and highly organized societies flourished in the forests of the southern and southeastern parts of the continent.
Rotational cutting and cultivation followed by abandonment swiddening in forests was accompanied by an intensive garden culture for fruit, spices, and vegetables, deforestation research paper the peculiar and deforestation research paper innovative development of wet rice cultivation rice paddiesa technique that stopped erosion and leaching of the soil in the cleared forest in heavy-rainfall areas.
Stock, particularly cattle and pigs, were integral to all parts deforestation research paper the economy. The evidence for similar processes is unfolding for the Americas.
Earliest were the swiddens in the equatorial upland rain-forest areas from as early as 12, BCE. From the tropical Gulf of Mexico lowland civilizations of the Olmec and Maya to the less organized tribal groups of the Amazon basin, rain deforestation research paper was being chopped, burnt, and changed or eliminated. Large patches of the Amazon forest were altered irrevocably by the selection and propagation of useful trees and by different cycles of cultivation, so that the mighty rain forest may be one large cultural artifact.
In North America, deforestation research paper, the earliest foodgrowing settlements c. Similar to the practice of the European Neolithics, flood plains and lower river terraces were cleared, and lower slopes altered as intensive cropping expanded, but unlike the Neolithics, hunting loomed much larger in the economy.
The vast eastern temperate woodlands were settled later after c. Knowledge about deforestation in Africa is sparse, and with the exception of settlement in savanna-woodland and adjacent belts in west Africa, it may not have been very extensive. The conclusion is that the impact of early humans on the forest was far greater than expected; it may have been one of the major deforestation episodes in history, which left anything but the pristine forest that is such a feature of the romantic imagination of the past and the environmental rhetoric of the present.
The classical world of the Mediterranean basin provides, for the first time, rich literary detail of wood consumption for shipbuilding, urban heating and deforestation research paper, and metal smelting, but it is tantalizingly silent about clearing for agriculture always the greatest cause of deforestation that must have gone on everywhere.
This was to be a common story in later ages too. The chopping down of trees as a prelude to farming and providing food was so commonplace that it simply did not warrant a mention, but settlement patterns and crop figures show how extensive it must have deforestation research paper. The Middle Ages in western and central Europe were entirely different.
Here an energetic, inventive, and rapidly expanding population left ample records of forest clearing through charters, rent rolls, court cases, field patterns, and place names.
Clearing was motivated by a strong religious belief that humans were helping to complete the creation of a divine, designed Earth and a desire by lay deforestation research paper ecclesiastical lords to expand rental revenues by encouraging settlement on the forest frontier.
Also, individuals wanted to achieve social freedom, property, and emancipation by breaking free of the rigid feudal ties. Undoubtedly three technical innovations helped raise agricultural production. First, the dominant system deforestation research paper two fields with one fallow was replaced by a three-field system, thus a shortening of the fallow period.
This was possible because new crops like oats and legumes helped to fertilize the soil and supplemented animal and human nutrition. Second, the development of the wheeled plow with coulter and moldboard allowed cultivation to move from the light deforestation research paper onto the heavy moist soils that were usually forested. Third, plowing efficiency was improved by the invention of the rigid horse collar and nailed horseshoes, increasing speed and pulling power, thus favoring the horse over the ox.
A major underlying driving force was a sixfold increase of population between and and the need for more food to avert famine. Cultivation rose from about deforestation research paper percent of land use in the sixth century CE to 30—40 percent by the late Middle Ages. The forests of France were reduced from 30 million hectares to 13 million hectares between around and CE. In Germany and central Europe, perhaps 70 percent of the land was forest covered in CE, but only about 25 percent remained by It also shifted the focus of Europe from south to north, from the restricted lowlands around the Mediterranean to the great forested plains drained by the Loire, Seine, Rhine, Elbe, Danube, deforestation research paper, and Thames, deforestation research paper.
Here the distinctive features of the medieval world developed—a buildup of technological competence, self-confidence, and accelerated change—which after enabled Europe to invade and colonize the rest of the world. In that long process of global expansion the forest and the wealth released from it played a central part. Massive deforestation must also have happened in China, but the detail is murky.
The population rose from about 65—80 million in CE to million inand land deforestation research paper agriculture quadrupled. Large swaths of the forested lands in the central and southern provinces were certainly engulfed by an enormous migration deforestation research paper peoples from the north.
During the roughly four hundred years from to aboutEurope burst out of its continental confines with far-reaching consequences for the global forests. Its capitalistic economy commoditized nearly all it found, creating wealth out of nature, whether it be land, trees, animals, plants, or people. Deforestation research paper strains were put on the global forest resource by a steadily increasing population c.
In the mainly temperate neo-European areas, settler societies were planted and created. Permanent settlement began in earnest by the s after the near elimination of the indigenes by virulent Old World pathogens, like smallpox, measles, and influenza.
The imported Old World crops and stock flourished wonderfully. Tree growth was considered a good indicator of soil fertility in all pioneer societies, and the bigger the trees the quicker they were felled to make way for farms.
The United States was the classic example. Clearing was widespread, universal, deforestation research paper, and an integral part of rural life; aboutsquare kilometers of dense forest were felled by about and a furthersquare kilometers by by which North-America, which one hundred years ago was nothing but a vast forest, is peopled with three million of inhabitants.
Four years ago, one might have travelled ten miles in the woods. without seeing a single habitation. Chastellux It was one of the biggest deforestation episodes ever. A similar process of the pioneer hacking out a life for himself and family in the forest occurred in Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, and Australia. In Australia, for example, nearlysquare kilometers of the southeastern forests and sparse woodland were cleared by the early twentieth century.
In the subtropical and tropical forests, deforestation research paper, European systems of exploitation led to the harvesting of indigenous tree crops e. Classic examples of this were the highly profitable crops of sugar in the West Indies, coffee and sugar in the subtropical coastal forests of Brazil, cotton and tobacco in the southern United States, tea in Sri Lanka and India, and later rubber in Malaysia and Indonesia. In deforestation research paper Brazil, over half of the originalsquare kilometers of the huge subtropical forest that ran down the eastern portions deforestation research paper the country had disappeared by through agricultural exploitation and mining.
In the state of Sao Paulo alone, the originalsquare kilometers of forest were reduced to 45, square kilometers by Peasant proprietors were not immune to the pressures of the global commercial market. Outstanding was the expansion of peasant cultivation in lower Burma encouraged by British administrators between andwhich resulted in the destruction of about 35, square kilometers of imposing equatorial kanazo rain forests and their replacement by rice.
Throughout the Indian subcontinent the early network of railways meant an expansion of all types of crops by small-scale farmers, often for cash, that led to forest clearing everywhere. Uncolonized Asian societies exploited their forests just as vigorously, commercially, and uncaringly as did their European counterparts. There is evidence from, for example, southwestern India and Hunan Province in south-central China deforestation research paper the sixteenth century onward to show that the commercialization of the forest was well established.
In the former, permanent indigenous agricultural settlements existed side by side with shifting cultivation, and village councils regulated forest exploitation by agriculturalists. The forest was not regarded as a community resource; larger landowners dominated forest use locally. In Hunan, a highly centralized administration encouraged land clearance in order to enhance local state revenues so as to increase the tax base and support a bigger bureaucracy and militia, deforestation research paper.
State encouragement was also given to migrations into the forested hill country of south China later on. Simply, forests everywhere were being exploited and were diminishing in size as a response to increasing population numbers and increasing complexity of society, deforestation research paper. In the subtropical world, deforestation research paper, change was just slower than that unleashed by the Europeans with their new aims, technologies, and intercontinental trade links, but no less severe.
Measures of destruction are hard deforestation research paper come by, but between deforestation research paper in South and Southeast Asia,square kilometers of forest and 62, square kilometers of interrupted or open forest were destroyed for cropland, deforestation research paper. During these centuries deforestation was also well underway in Europe itself, deforestation research paper was being colonized internally, deforestation research paper.
This was particularly true in the mixedforest zone of central European Russia, where over 67, square kilometers were cleared between around and The insatiable demand in all societies for new land to grow crops and settle agriculturalists has been matched by a rising demand for the products of the forest themselves.
Alternative construction timbers like teak and mahogany were utilized from the tropical hardwood forests since the beginning of the eighteenth century. The pace of transformation increased during the first half of the twentieth century. In the Western world demands for timber accelerated, deforestation research paper. New uses pulp, paper, packaging, deforestation research paper, plywood, chipboard and relatively little substitution of other materials boosted use, while traditional uses in energy production, construction, and industry continued to loom large.
The indispensable and crucial nature of timber in many Western economies gave it a strategic value akin to that of petroleum in economies today. In the tropical world the massive expansion of population by more than half a billion on a base of 1.
Here, Cutting Down Millions of Trees is Actually a Good Thing - National Geographic
, time: 3:06The Key Purpose of Research Paper on Deforestation | blogger.com
· Deforestation Problem Research Paper. Deforestation is the cutting down of trees for the purpose of converting the land to none forest use. Deforestation involves cutting down trees and stumps completely or partially for a variety of reasons. The major reason why people cut down trees is for fuel use whereby the cut down trees are used as a source of energy, a phenomenon that is very common · Paper type: Research paper, Subject: Deforestation. Deforestation is the process of the cutting down of forests for various purposes. Forests are cut down, because people require more territories for agriculture, cattle, more the building of towns, villages and roads The word deforestation is a wide-ranging term to cover the cutting, use, and elimination of trees. Subsumed under it are other activities like fire, domestic heating and cooking, smelting metals, making ceramics, construction of shelter and implements, and the creation of new land for cultivation and grazing
No comments:
Post a Comment