Explain the Environmental Effects of Deforestration.

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With reference to examples describe the environmental consequences of deforestation. Deforestation is the phenomenon of cutting down of large chunks of rainforests for human needs in an unsustainable manner. Deforestation is a very dangerous phenomenon with very serious environmental impacts. Firstly, the amount of trees cut down greatly reduces the amount of oxygen produced, and greatly decreases the surface area of carbon sinks on our planet. This means that the forests will not have the capacity to trap the necessary amount carbon dioxide and convert it into oxygen through photosynthesis, and all the greenhouse gases will be released into the atmosphere and trap the sun’s heat on the earth, which will drastically warm it up. Yet, there are also smaller case effects of deforestation. For example, many animals are becoming extinct, for example the orangutans in Indonesia. This is because over 54 million hectares of rainforests have disappeared from indonesia in the last 5 years. This is a loss of over 40%, and this means that the Orangutans are losing their habitat and can’t survive. Also, since the trees are cut down, there will be water shortage in the regional hydrological system because there will be less evapotranspiration, which might lead to the desertification of certain areas which might cause fires. Also, the soil will lose support from the trees, which will lead to large amounts of soil erosion, which might in turn lead to the loss of fertility of the land and might poison the water supply in the area. The trees will also stop to suck rainwater up, which leads to increased surface runoff which greatly increases the amount of

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