Common Core

Unit 9: Environment and Ecology

Reading:

Deforestation: Causes and Effects

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Teacher: Hassan Khedda

What is

deforestation?

Deforestation means clearing of forests and using the land for other purposes.

What are

the causes of deforestation?

Deforestation: Causes and Effects

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The statistics are alarming. More than 80 percent of the Earth's natural forests have already disappeared. Up to 90 percent of West Africa's coastal rain forests have vanished. In Brazil and Indonesia, which contain the world's two largest areas of rain forest, the number of trees is decreasing rapidly. All this is the consequence of logging, fires, and land-clearing for agriculture and cattle-grazing.

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Seventy percent of the Earth's land animals and plants reside in forests. So, one of the consequences of deforestation is the loss of living space. Secondly, rain forests help generate rainfall in many countries. Studies have shown that destruction of rain forests in such West African countries as Nigeria, Ghana, and Côte d'Ivoire has caused about twenty years of droughts in the interior of Africa.