Environmental Issues: Deforestation Book Project
Hannah Pilon Due Date: Friday February 8, 2013 Winter Term Library Assignment: Deforestation Marcus, B. A. (2009). Tropical forests. (pp. 125-135). Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett Publishers. This chapter was very informative and gave a lot of information about the reasons of deforestation. I knew that logging and agriculture were major causes of deforestation, but this chapter taught me that mining too is also a big factor. The author was very knowledgeable about this subject and wrote in a way that was very easy to understand.
This chapter also gave a very thorough explanation of the impacts of deforestation on the lands. Through this chapter, the author explains how just because a few trees are cut down, the water supply diminishes and can lead to drought as well as many other issues that I did not know about. This is probably my favourite source about this deforestation problem as it was easy to understand and the author did not drag out his writing and got to the point very quickly. It was a good read! Forsyth, T. , & Walker, A. (2008). Forest guardians, forest destroyers. (pp. 20-21).
Seattle, Washington: University of Washington Press. This is a short section within a larger book, but just because it may be small does not mean that it is not informative. In this section, it was suggested that deforestation occurring in Ghana is leading to the expansions of savannahs. I believe that this is an important section, as many do not realize that many African countries are also suffering from deforestation, which is depleting the lands, creating more savannahs and deserts. This section gave me further knowledge on the crisis of deforestation in Ghana and how it affects the people that live there.
It explains how the soil is becoming depleted, which in the long term, will greatly effect the people living in these areas. De’Ath, C. , ; Michalenko, G. (1993). High technology and original peoples: The case of deforestation in Papua New Guinea and Canada. In S. Rietbergen (Ed. ), The Eathscan reader in Tropical forestry (pp. 281-287). London: Earthscan Publications Limited. This chapter is extremely informative. Within pages 281-87, it explains how a Japanese paper company has gone into Papua New Guinea and basically destroyed the land.
I found this section to be informative and eye opening because the Japanese company only cares about money, they are exploiting the land which leaves the workers and the native peoples that live in these areas to be left with basically nothing. It’s amazing how much a culture can depend on a forest and when it is gone how much their life has to change in order to survive. I have also come to notice that companies are causing a lot of deforestation from other countries, which seemingly do not care about the locals at all.
They only care about making money and forget about the human life that depends on the forest to survive. Avissar, R. , Ramos da Silva, R. , ; Werth, D. (2006). Impacts of tropical deforestation on regional and global hydroclimatology In W. F. Laurance ; C. A. Peres (Eds. ), Emerging Threats to Tropical Rainforests (pp. 73-75). Chicago, USA: The University of Chicago Press. This section within the chapter went into detail about the global impacts of deforestation. It explained that how deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest effected the rainfall and precipitation in the United States.
I found this to be extremely interesting how if one part of the world is ‘damaged’ it can, and will, affect another part of the world, which will greatly affect the other country. I learned a lot from this little section and the authors did a good job and explaining how this process works. I really enjoyed reading this section and I had no idea that deforestation in one area could affect another country so drastically. It is amazing how our world and ecosystems are all intertwined and how delicate each one is. Grieser Johns, A. (1997). Timber production and biodiversity conservation in tropical rain forests. pp. 185-187). Cambridge, UK: The Press Sydicate of the University of Cambridge. Throughout these pages, the issue of animal extinction became a new issue that I knew was a result of deforestation, but for some reason had never occurred to me. This author explains that although at this moment a lot of rainforest animals are “vulnerable” if change does not happen, many of these animals will become endangered, if not extinct. With a lot of species not discovered yet, there is no true knowledge of how many animals in these rainforests are already endangered and on their way to being an instinct species.
The pages that I have used in this book were very informational and very eye opening. With so many innocent animals are being put in danger everyday because of deforestation and its not just them anymore as plants are also in danger of becoming vulnerable and extinct. Mateiyenu Nanang, D. (2012). Plantations forestry in Ghana theory and applications. New York: Nova Science Publishers. The author is very knowledgeable and this shows through in his writing. Although he puts a lot of graphs and charts, sometimes it was confusing trying to understand the point he was trying to get across.
From what I did understand, he was talking about how the logging in Ghana has become a larger industry in the past few years than ever before. Because of this, Ghana is starting to already starting to see the effects of deforestation. The author also went into detail about how they need to start replanting a lot more that they currently are because very soon they will be on the way to clearing out all of the trees that they have access too. Although this book was hard to understand at times, it was a very good resource and gave a lot of good information about deforestation in Ghana.
