Jona Tilton

English 1102 Honors

Trina Sotirakopulos
11 December 2016

Deforestation and Global Warming

Global warming is attacking our planet on all fronts, environmentally, economically, and
even socially. The most damage intake is on our environment, causing glaciers to melt and sea
levels to rise, increasing amounts of famine and drought, and oceans are becoming more acidic
which leads to the bleaching of coral reefs (Krodel). Mainstream society has focused a lot on key
environmental issues, the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation (LDF) is one of them. Their goal is to
spread the following message to the mainstream culture, if we do not change our course, we
could soon be on an irreversible path towards severe climate instability, resource scarcity and
environmental degradation, resulting in a planet no longer capable of sustaining life as we
currently know it (About the LDF par. 8). One of the many reasons global warming is
transpiring is deforestation. Deforestation is the permanent deconstruction of forests where the
land is thereafter available for non-forest uses. Deforestation can come in many forms, including
clear-cutting for agriculture, forest fires, logging operations, and degradation as a result of
climate change. I believe deforestation is the leading cause to global warming, although many
global leaders seem to be turning a blind eye to it. The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) are
not one of the organizations turning a blind eye to deforestation. UCS exclaims how the
problem (of global warming) cannot be solved if the role of tropical deforestation is ignored
(Tropical Deforestation and Global Warming). People cut through forests because of the idea
that forests are worth more dead, than they are alive. Logging companies rely solely on

deforestation and agriculture is vital to sustaining life. Roughly 46,000 to 58,000 square miles of
forests are lost each year, this is equivalent to 48 football fields every minute. While
deforestation may be important in some aspects, it should not happen at such alarming rates.
Professor Krodel teaches an advanced placement class on environmental science and he said,
Deforestation is absolutely a major cause of global climate change on several fronts.
On one front, deforestation is getting rid of forests at a rapid rate. Forests cover roughly
31% of the worlds land surface and according to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO), half of the worlds tropical forests have been lost. The temperature of the
Earth depends on maintaining the balance between inbound energy from the sun and the
outbound energy that bounces back into space. Carbon dioxide (CO2) absorbs heat that would
otherwise return to space. Some of this energy is re-emitted back to Earth, causing additional
heating of the planet. Trees harvest CO2 by taking it in with their cells as a result of
photosynthesis. Trees then store the CO2 within their bodies; a tree is comprised of about 50%
carbon. While some of this carbon is released back to the atmosphere through restoration, the
mass majority of it is contained within the tree. The UCS estimates that U.S. forests absorb
between one million and three million metric tons of carbon dioxide each year. When trees are
burned or harvested, they release all of this carbon into the atmosphere, thus increasing the
heating of the planet.
While deforestation has its obvious negative effects to global warming, how often are
these effects actually occurring? Andersen, Doyle, and Granado, deliberate the results of a
longitudinal study of the voluminous amounts of carbon emission from Bolivia from 1990-2010.
The study used a model that takes into account deforestation, forest degradation, forest regrowth,
and gradual carbon decomposition and accumulation, in order to receive net emissions by region.

It was discovered that during the period 2000-2010, about 430,000 hectares (equivalent to 10,000
square meters) of forest were lost annually. Deforestation on this large of a scale causes CO2
emissions of about one hundred million tons per year, making deforestation responsible for more
than 80% of Bolivias total CO2 emissions. (Andersen et al.) The fact that deforestation is the
cause of 80% of one countrys total CO2 count, speaks volumes about how much of an impact
deforestation can actually cause. Through remote sensing and geographic information system
(GIS) technology Reddy, Dutta, and Jha, analyze deforestation rates in India. Overall the rates of
deforestation are increasing, describing it as a focal hindrance (Analysing the Gross and Net
Deforestation Rates in India). Although after looking at the graphs provided it would seem that
India has had great progress in decreasing their deforestation efforts. Figure 1 shows that in
2001-2003 there was a .21% net deforestation, but in 2009-2011 the percentage of net
deforestation was -0.03%. So while the deforestation rates are increasing, they are increasing at a
slower rate due to Indias government involvement in reducing deforestation. (Reddy et al.) India
has made the observation that deforestation is a problem and since then, has made laws and
regulations in an attempt to decrease it. Through this article one can see that a countrys
government involvement is necessary in order to attack this problem and prevent global
warming.

Figure 1. Source: Reddy et all.

Some researchers suggest that that deforestation could perhaps be beneficial, not in the
sense of providing revenue for companies, but in the sense of the environment. This study was
conducted by Dartmouth College and asserts that more frequent logging and deforestation could
actually be beneficial in areas of high altitudes where snow is present and lumber productivity is
low. Even though these areas are few and far between, the idea is that the snowfall on the ground
could provide more merit than a standing forest would. This is due to the surface reflection of
solar energy off of the snow. This introduces the concept of albedo and how it is involved in
climate change. Albedo is how much different surfaces reflect incoming solar radiation versus
absorbing it. Light-colored surfaces generally reflect, while dark-colored surfaces absorb this
energy from the sun (Krodel). The snowy surface of the mountains helps to maintain our
climate. Professor Krodel provided an example to better understand the impacts of albedo; As
the white ice caps melt, they expose more dark-colored ocean water to the solar radiation, which
reduces the albedo and increases the absorption of the solar radiation and temperature of the
oceans. The researchers from Dartmouth used a computer model to look at nearly 500 forests
across New Hampshire. They calculated the influence of carbon storage and surface reflectivity
on the optimal time to harvest timber. This led to the following conclusion by David Lutz, lead
author and research associate at Dartmouth, In particular, we found that in a handful of sites in
New Hampshire, the harvest age approached zero. This suggests that in those locations,
maintaining a cleared field with shrubs, grasses and other early successional growth was
economically more valuable than if the forest was left alone to store carbon. Although
deforestation may be more beneficial in snowy mountainous regions of our world, these regions
are very infrequent on Earth. When you take into account the many different surface area types
that make up our Earth, mountains are only 5.84% of the total surface area. This small

percentage is even including mountains that do not contain snow, so one can see how this study
does not justify deforestation as a whole, but simply justifies it for a microscopic portion of our
Earth. When we take this into consideration, its clear that deforestation is still a substantial
complication that is occurring on such an immense scale.
Although these mountainous regions are few and far between, the Amazon is a vital
region when discussing deforestation. Kozloff discusses deforestation in his chapter,
Deforestation Dilemma from his book No Rain in the Amazon. In this chapter he provides
interesting information on the deforestation dilemma, while mainly focussing on the
deforestation efforts in Peru. He discusses how even though Peru has historically had one of the
lowest deforestation rates in the Amazon, forest loss has been on the upswing in recent years.
What happens environmentally in Peru is important, because the country has the second largest
area of Amazon and contains some of the largest and most biologically diverse forests on Earth.
Kozloff discusses a concept called selective logging as one component of deforestation. In
contrast to clear-cutting, which chops down vast swathes of forest, leaving little behind to save
wood debris and a lunar landscape, selective logging removes a few trees and theoretically
leaves the rest intact (Kozloff 128). While this may sound sustainable, the truth is that for every
tree that gets chopped down up to thirty trees can be severely damaged. The Peruvian Amazon
contains more than 300 species of trees, but the most sought after species is the Swietenia
macrophylla. On their quest to chop down this specie the rest of the nearby trees get pulled down
in a kind of avalanche effect due to all the interconnected vines and roots. In 2005, one
researcher calculated that selective logging in the Amazon was responsible for the emission of
one hundred million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which came on top of the
already huge carbon dioxide emissions attributed to traditional deforestation- another 400 million

tons (Kozloff 130). The Amazon is obviously critical to sustain and still takes a colossal amount
of desecration from deforestation, whereas these snowy mountainous regions are not contributing
nearly as much of a solution to overpower these vast amount of damages.
Global warming is a major issue that bears constant attention from mainstream society,
the press, big business, governments around the world, and the scientific community. Rarely in
human history have there been issues that have affected our planet and human society on the
scale that global climate change does. Through extensive research of deforestation and its effects
on climate change as a whole, one can see the large correlation between deforestation and global
warming. Although there are some benefits to deforestation, such as agriculture, it should still
not be done at such alarming rates. Because deforestation has such an extensive impact on global
warming, climate change can not be prevented unless we look more deeply into possible
solutions.

Works Cited
"About the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation - Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation." Leonardo
DiCaprio
Foundation. GreenHour, Inc., 21 June 2015. Web. 10 Dec. 2016.
Andersen, Lykee E., Anna Sophia Doyle, and Susan Del Granado. "Net Carbon Emissions
from Deforestation in Bolivia during 1990-2000 and 2000-2010: Results from a Carbon
Bookkeeping Model." PLoS ONE 11.3 (2016): 1-18. Academic Search Complete.
Web. 05 Nov. 2016.
Kozloff, Nikolas. "Deforestation Dilemma." No Rain in the Amazon: How South America's
Climate Change Affects the Entire Planet. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
123-44. Print.
Krodel, David. E-Mail interview. 23 November 2016.
Lutz, David, and Howarth, Richard. "Valuing Albedo as an Ecosystem Service: Implications
for Forest Management." Climatic Change 124.1/2 (2014): 53-63. Academic
Search
Complete. Web. 05 Nov. 2016.
Reddy, Sudhakar C., Kalloli Dutta, and C.S. Jha. "Analysing the Gross and Net Deforestation
Rates in India." Current Science 105.11 (2013): 1492-500. Academic Search
Complete. Web. 5 Nov. 2016.
"Some Forestlands Cool Climate Better Without Trees, Dartmouth-Led Study Finds."
Dartmouth. Trustees of Dartmouth College, 25 June 2015. Web. 04 Nov. 2016.
"Tropical Deforestation and Global Warming." Union of Concerned Scientists. Union of
Concerned Scientists, n.d. Web. 20 Nov. 2016.