Deforestation or forest clearance is the removal and destruction of a forest or stand of trees from land that is then converted to non-forest use. Deforestation can involve conversion of forest land to farms, ranches, or urban use. About 31% of Earth's land surface is covered by forests at present. This is one-third less than the forest cover before the expansion of agriculture, with half of that loss occurring in the last century. Between 15 million to 18 million hectares of forest, an area the size of Bangladesh, are destroyed every year. On average 2,400 trees are cut down each minute. Estimates vary widely as to the extent of deforestation in the tropics. In 2019, nearly a third of the overall tree cover loss, or 3.8 million hectares, occurred within humid tropical primary forests. These are areas of mature rainforest that are especially important for biodiversity and carbon storage.
The Amazon rainforest, also called Amazon jungle or Amazonia, is a moist broadleaf tropical rainforest in the Amazon biome that covers most of the Amazon basin of South America. This basin encompasses 7,000,000 km2 (2,700,000 sq mi), of which 6,000,000 km2 (2,300,000 sq mi) are covered by the rainforest. This region includes territory belonging to nine nations and 3,344 indigenous territories.
Rainforests are forests characterized by a closed and continuous tree canopy, moisture-dependent vegetation, the presence of epiphytes and lianas and the absence of wildfire. Rainforests can be generally classified as tropical rainforests or temperate rainforests, but other types have been described.
The Amazon basin is the part of South America drained by the Amazon River and its tributaries. The Amazon drainage basin covers an area of about 7,000,000 km2 (2,700,000 sq mi), or about 35.5 percent of the South American continent. It is located in the countries of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela, as well as the territory of French Guiana.
The Atlantic Forest is a South American forest that extends along the Atlantic coast of Brazil from Rio Grande do Norte state in the northeast to Rio Grande do Sul state in the south and inland as far as Paraguay and the Misiones Province of Argentina, where the region is known as Selva Misionera.
Tropical rainforests are dense and warm rainforests with high rainfall typically found between 10° north and south of the Equator. They are a subset of the tropical forest biome that occurs roughly within the 28° latitudes. Tropical rainforests are a type of tropical moist broadleaf forest, that includes the more extensive seasonal tropical forests. True rainforests usually occur in tropical rainforest climates where no dry season occurs; all months have an average precipitation of at least 60 mm (2.4 in). Seasonal tropical forests with tropical monsoon or savanna climates are sometimes included in the broader definition.
The Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project is a large-scale ecological experiment looking at the effects of habitat fragmentation on tropical rainforest. The experiment which was established in 1979 is located near Manaus in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest. The project is jointly managed by the Amazon Biodiversity Center and the Brazilian Institute for Research in the Amazon (INPA).
The environment of Sri Lanka exhibits a remarkable biodiversity.
Building blocks for tropical rainforest conservation include ecotourism and rehabilitation. Reforestation and restoration are common practices in certain areas to try to increase tropical rainforest density. By communicating with the local people living in, and around, the rainforest, conservationists can learn more about what might allow them to best focus their efforts. Rainforests are globally important to sustainability and preservation of biodiversity. Although they may vary in location and inhabited species of plants and animals, they remain important worldwide for their abundance of natural resources and for the ecosystem services. It is important to take into consideration the differing species and the biodiversity that exists across different rainforest types in order to accurately implement methods of conservation.
Brazil once had the highest deforestation rate in the world and in 2005 still had the largest area of forest removed annually. Since 1970, over 700,000 square kilometres (270,000 sq mi) of the Amazon rainforest have been destroyed. In 2001, the Amazon was approximately 5,400,000 square kilometres (2,100,000 sq mi), which is only 87% of the Amazon's original size. According to official data, about 729,000 km² have already been deforested in the Amazon biome, which corresponds to 17% of the total. 300,000 km² have been deforested in the last 20 years.
The extensive and rapid clearing of forests (deforestation) within the borders of Nigeria has significant impacts on both local and global scales.
Colombia loses 2,000 km2 of forest annually to deforestation, according to the United Nations in 2003. Some suggest that this figure is as high as 3,000 km2 due to illegal logging in the region. Deforestation results mainly from logging for timber, small-scale agricultural ranching, mining, development of energy resources such as hydro-electricity, infrastructure, cocaine production, and farming.
The Amazon rainforest, spanning an area of 3,000,000 km2, is the world's largest rainforest. It encompasses the largest and most biodiverse tropical rainforest on the planet, representing over half of all rainforests. The Amazon region includes the territories of nine nations, with Brazil containing the majority (60%), followed by Peru (13%), Colombia (10%), and smaller portions in Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana.
Defaunation is the global, local, or functional extinction of animal populations or species from ecological communities. The growth of the human population, combined with advances in harvesting technologies, has led to more intense and efficient exploitation of the environment. This has resulted in the depletion of large vertebrates from ecological communities, creating what has been termed "empty forest". Defaunation differs from extinction; it includes both the disappearance of species and declines in abundance. Defaunation effects were first implied at the Symposium of Plant-Animal Interactions at the University of Campinas, Brazil in 1988 in the context of Neotropical forests. Since then, the term has gained broader usage in conservation biology as a global phenomenon.
Rates and causes of deforestation vary from region to region around the world. In 2009, two-thirds of the world's forests were located in just 10 countries: Russia, Brazil, Canada, the United States, China, Australia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Indonesia, India, and Peru.
Igapó is a word used in Brazil for blackwater-flooded forests in the Amazon biome. These forests and similar swamp forests are seasonally inundated with freshwater. They typically occur along the lower reaches of rivers and around freshwater lakes. Freshwater swamp forests are found in a range of climate zones, from boreal through temperate and subtropical to tropical. In the Amazon Basin of Brazil, a seasonally whitewater-flooded forest is known as a várzea, which is similar to igapó in many regards; the key difference between the two habitats is in the type of water that floods the forest.
Deforestation in Borneo has taken place on an industrial scale since the 1960s. Borneo, the third largest island in the world, divided between Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei, was once covered by dense tropical and subtropical rainforests.
Deforestation in Nepal has always been a serious issue, which has a severe effect on the lives of poor people. In the past, Nepal was a widely forested nation. However now with the requirement for the extension of rural areas, migration of hills people to the plains, the developing regional interest for timber, and the local residents dependence on firewood as the essential source of energy, less than 30% of the nation's forest cover remains. Due to the continuous deforestation in Nepal, many people and creatures are dying. Around 70 percent of the people in Nepal work in agriculture, even if it is difficult to farm in the prevailing unfavourable weather conditions.
The Purus-Madeira moist forests (NT0157) is an ecoregion in the central Amazon basin. It is part of the Amazon biome. The ecoregion covers a stretch of flat and relatively infertile land between the Purus and Madeira rivers, extending to the Solimões River in the north. It is isolated from other regions by the seasonally flooded várzea forest along these rivers, and has a high degree of endemism among its flora and fauna. The natural environment is relatively intact. The BR-319 highway was built along the length of the ecoregion in the early 1970s, but rapidly deteriorated and is now closed.
The Juruá–Purus moist forests (NT0133) is an ecoregion in northwest Brazil in the Amazon biome. The terrain is very flat and soils are poor. The rivers flood annually. There are no roads in the region, and the dense rainforest is relatively intact, although plans to extend the Trans-Amazonian Highway through the region would presumably cause widespread damage to the habitat.
