Bad foundations
The richness of the rainforests is built on surprisingly poor foundations. Most tropical soils are old- some over 100 million years old, and the combination of heat, age and high rainfall has led to their mineral nutrients being washed away.
Rainforest plants however are able to grow well on such soils because small amounts of minerals are found in the air and rain and plants are able to absorb them. Some trees even grow roots through their bark called buttresses to collect these minerals.
Most of the fertility in the rainforests is not in the soils but in the plants and vegetaion. This makes the rainforest a fragile habitat for if the vegetation is destroyed then the heavy rains soon wash the minerals the trees and plants need away. This is called leeching.
Indigenous People
Some people blame the natives of the rainforests- the indigenous people, that it is their fault for the deforestation of the forests. However you have to ask yourself- could this really be the case? These people have lived in the forests for thousands of years but the forests are still there aren’t they? They have not been ruined or demolished but are still vibrant and healthy- or at least they were.
There are more then 1000 indigenous tribes in the all of the world’s rainforests. The Amazonian rainforests were occupied by its natives nearly 34, 000 years ago and they are still going strong.
Different tribes have different ways of using the forest. Some are entirely food gatherers and hunters while others though make a living by hunting and growing and farming crops.
They know which fruits and nuts are good to eat, which plants can be used as medicines and which plants can be used as poisons for hunting.
The plots that they make to grow their crops in are usually only the same size as one, which form naturally in forests by storms. The clearing work is done in the dry season and the leaves and wood are left to dry. Towards to end of the dry season, the dried plants are burnt and the ash, which is rich in nutrients, enriches the soil.
After around three years or so, the plots are usually abandoned- when the plot needs more time and effort spent on them as the fertility leeches away. It takes 50 years for the plot to fully grow back into the forests and they can only be used again after this period of time.
Rain forest deforestation
There are four main causes for the deforestation and destruction of the rainforests. They are called Socio-economic factors.
These are:
The Brazilian government has encouraged the settlement of large areas of forest by ranchers. To claim ownership of government-owned land the person or company has to show that the land is being used effectively. The quickest and cheapest way is to burn the forest to make cattle pasture. This has been the major cause of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest.
However the ranches after only a short period of 5 -6 years will be abandoned, as they will have lost their fertility by then.
In an average working life of an Amazonian ranch, each square metre of pasture has produced just enough beef for three quarter pound beef burgers- around £3 in our money.
So far multi-national companies to supply the worlds demand for wood, paper and other ‘necessities’ have cut down almost a third of the Amazonian rainforests as well as most of the rainforest in South Asia and Africa.
It is not possible to log large areas of rainforest without damaging the forest habitat. Each tree removed means a loss of nutrients and the removal of particular species of trees may upset the finely balanced relationships between plants and animals. By destroying the forests you also destroy intertwined eco-systems, biomes, creatures habitats and part of our world.
The Amazon rainforest and others like it are rich in mineral deposits such as gold, iron ore and copper. They attract rich multi-national companies which in turn clear miles of rainforest and etch and dig humungous pits and quarries in the landscape to get at the precious metals. The companies destroy massive areas of rainforest and when they have finished getting all the minerals possible, they leave the site for a new one and the process starts all over again. Not only do they create a horrible and ugly mark in the lard but also they scare wildlife and creatures from the surviving rainforest around with their noisy machines and vehicles. As they have taken all the shelter from the soil the land that is left is left bare for the rain to erode and leech and any nutrients remaining are taken away so there is zilch chance of the forest ever growing back.
Though not thought of as as important as the other three socio-economic factors- the building of roads in the rainforests are a part of the destruction of the rainforests.
A web of roads have been built in the Amazonian rainforest to help the transport of timber, cattle, and crops to the markets and companies. These weave in and out- cutting the forests in pieces and scarring the land. The longest built is the Trans-Amazonian High Way, which stretches 5300km through the rainforests.
The traffic and vehicles, which rumble along the roads, scare and frighten the wild life away from those places as they are unused to such noises and are easily frightened. This disrupts eco systems and the habitats of the creatures, which are vital to the fragile balance of the rainforests.
Effects of Deforestation of the Rainforests
Global Warming
Rainforests prevent the earth’s average temperature from rising higher then it is now. Some gases, particularly carbon dioxide, methane and the CFCs used in fridges, help to trap heat within the earth’s atmosphere- the Green House Effect.
The higher the concentrations of these gases in the atmosphere the warmer the earth’s climate will become.
The rainforests are great stores of carbon. Plants take in carbon dioxide and use it to make food and substances such as wood.
When a tree dies or is burnt, the carbon in it’s tissues is released back into the air as carbon dioxide. If another replaces that tree, the new tree will, as it grows, absorb an equal amount of carbon dioxide from the air.
If, however the total amount of the world’s forests is decreased, huge amounts of carbon will be released as carbon dioxide into the air, where it will add to the Green House gases present.
It has been estimated that about one third of the carbon dioxide being released comes from the burning of rainforests. In 1989 the burning of the Brazilian rainforests probably added 350 million tons of carbon into the air.
A doubling of the amount of carbon dioxide in the air is calculated to lead to about a 2.5 degrees Celsius rise in the worlds aver. Temperature this would be enough to make the ice caps over Greenland and possibly Antarctica to melt. This would cause flooding in the low-lying land of the earth- most of which is heavily populated.
Flooding
An important job all forests do is slowing down the flow of water into rivers after heavy rains. This is particularly important in the Tropics, where the rainfall is high and the rainstorms often violent. The forest acts like a sponge – holding back the water and letting it out slowly.
By doing this forests reduce the suddenness and violence of floods. The loss of forests has increases flooding in places such as the flood plains of the Ganges River in Bangladesh. The Ganges River’s source is in the foothills of the Himalayas. From there it moves along the very fertil floodplain of Bangladesh and towards the sea. Much of the forest that once covered the mountains there has been lost through logging. When the seasonal rains come, there is less of the forest sponge to soak up the rainwater, so the water runs off the land very quickly and makes any flooding much worse. Thousands of people are made homeless and millions of hectares of farmland are drowned every time there is a major flood in the Ganges River.
Save the rainforests
The tropical rainforests are a vast store of diversity. Only now are people starting to realise how great this diversity is.
The great rush to log and clear rainforests for whatever reason means that the world is in danger of loosing much of that diversity by changing the habitat of thousands of plants and species.
However there are solutions to the problem of the loss of rainforests though only if we have the will and want can they help stop the destruction of the rainforests.
One of these are:
Agroforestry
This involves the growing of crops and trees together. Th reason this has been so successful in some tropical countries is because the trees provide shelter and shade for crops. The crops provide an annual income for the farmers and in the time the trees can be harvested again. It is also possible to plant Teak trees together with crops, and Teak is used for making expensive furniture. Once th trees are cut then the whole process starts again with the planting of new trees.
Another useful tree for agroforestry is palm trees. In the natural rainforest palm trees grow under the main canopy. They have large leaves, which help break the fall of heavy raindrops, and this helps prevent soil erosion and the leeching of the soil minerals. Palms like the Amazonian dende palm produce seeds which vegetable oil can be made out of.
Agroforestry could prove to be a useful way of using some of the rainforests lands, which have been cleared and afterwards abandoned for cattle ranching. If this is successful then it will help reduce the need to clear more rainforest. At the moment the pattern is that as soon as the lands are abandoned, the settlers move off into new areas and clear lande. If the use of land that has been already been cleared could be improved, that will be good news for the rainforest left.
Thank you for reading my work and I am sorry there aren’t more ☺ examples but I thought it was long enough as it was. ☺
