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short note on deforestation

Deforestation is the destruction or clearing of forested lands, usually for the purposes of expanding agricultural land or for timber harvesting. When the process is conducted by clear cutting (removal of most or all of the canopy tree growth, leaving few or no live or dead trees standing) or when mass forest burning occurs, significant losses of habitat and biodiversity may result, including the erosion of biological community structure and the extinction of species. Deforestation is proceeding at a rapid pace in many areas of the world, especially in the tropical and boreal forest regions of the earth, with annual net loss of forests during the 1990s estimated in the range of nine to sixteen million hectares per annum. Large scale deforestation may have adverse impacts on bio-sequestration of atmospheric carbon dioxide, exacerbating greenhouse gas buildup, through the release of stored carbon in tree biomass and reduced CO2 fixation rates due to loss of trees. Deforested regions are often subject to accelerated rates of soil erosion, increased surface runoff and sedimentation of streams and rivers, reduced infiltration and ground water recharge, with adverse water quality impacts on surface water and ground water resources.

Root causes of deforestation include a broad range of economic and social factors, such as (a) poorly formulated property rights systems, (b) widespread poverty and overpopulation, placing pressure on marginally productive lands for subsistence, (c) expansion of agriculture to feed a dramatically increasing human population, (d) short term view of forest management economics at the expense of long term forest productivity and (e) lax forest management. The impacts of deforestation can include the displacement of indigenous peoples from their historic living areas, or the loss of traditional livelihoods and food production and procurement systems.  At the current time there is a strong correlation between widespread deforestation and countries which have a low per capita income, deforestation form commercial timber harvesting  is still a problem in many industrialized countries as well.