http://news.mongabay.com/2011/0919-west_africa_rainfall.html
This article is about how when people in Africa cut down their rain forests, it makes less rain fall in the area. When the trees are cut down, it makes the air hotter. This makes it so less rain clouds can form and half as much rain is dropped. The African rain forests survive off of barely any water to begin with and when you decrease that, many of the rain forests will start to disappear.
I feel that deforestation is a terrible thing to begin with, but when deforestation makes it so less trees can live to begin with, it just wont work. We are killing ourselves by clearing all of this land, and after we reach a certain point, we won't be able to undo this because not enough rain will fall for trees to survive anyway.
A good idea is to make the cuts in a fishtail pattern. This does less damage to the environment and won't make it rain any less. the ideal solution would to just stop this all together, but that wont happen. So if this is second best, we better start soon.
Questions:
1) Do you think there is a way to stop deforestation? If yes, what?
2) Why do you think people still do this even though they know its killing the environment?
3) If you had to live there, and farming was your only job, would you be wary of the environment when trying to earn a living?
I was surprised to hear that cutting down trees can reduce the rainfall in an area. I didn't know that was actually possible, but it makes sense if you think about it.
ReplyDeleteQ: Do you think that there is a way to stop deforestation? If yes, what?
A: I believe that there is a way to stop deforestation, and that is to stop cutting down trees and using recycled products instead of wood. Paper use could be reduced, and more things could be online instead of on paper.
I'm suprised that if the the people there were smart enough to figure out the whole scientific process behind rain formation that they were not also smart enough to see what they were doing to the environment. Deforestation is just awful in general. It seems somewhat acceptable if people are doing it for the matierial but deforestation to stop rain is just ridiculous.
ReplyDelete1) Do you think there is a way to stop deforestation? If yes, what?
I think that to completly stop deforestation would be impossible, but I think that it is very possible to greatly reduce the amount of forests destroyed each year. We need to try our best to reduce our independence on wood based products now before there is too little forestry left on earth and by then our world would be forced into castastrophy. Technology is good because it helps cut down paper consumption; but wood, i think would be hard to live witthout. I think with the increasing population the demand for wooden structures will keep going, even though we are generally becoming much greener over time I think that we may always or at least for a very long time have to be at least somehow dependent on wood.
I'm surprised that no one has really done anything to prevent this deforestation! Africa is already short on water, so by taking away what little rainfall they recieve each year, those cutting the trees down are killing the inhabitants of the area.
ReplyDeleteI also had no idea that cutting down trees actually prevented rainfall, although I never really thought about it. If anything, before the article, I might have thought that cutting down trees may help rainfall since less water is in use, so it could evaporate easier...
Expansion:
Here is another article about deforestation and the effects it can have on humans:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/09/deforestation-making-somalia-famine-worse.php?campaign=th_rss
I understand that people in Africa need to farm to make a living and to have food to eat. That being said I am not happy at all about the rain forests being cut down. Not it is very easy for me to say that, being as we don't live near any rainforest, and we don't need to farm to live.
ReplyDeleteHonestly if I lived in Africa and farming was my only job, I would absolutely continue to keep farming. Chances are (unfortunately) that I am not very well educated, and farming is probably what I have been doing my whole life. It is probably all I know how to do. Even if I did know that it is bad for the environment I would be forced to farm or face starvation.