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Environmental Health
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Deforestation is the act of cutting down forests to create room for expansion.
- History of deforestation
• Has been occurring throughout time to clear land for grazing, but has been
increasing in magnitude in last several hundred years. In 2015, over half off all
forests have been cut down (University of Michigan, 2015)
- Areas most impacted
• South America,Southeast Asia, and Russia are cutting down the most forests
(World Wildlife Foundation, 2014)
Primary risk/benefits to humans
- Industrial benefits
• Income through sale of forest material
- Selling of trees provides monetary incentive to cut down forests
• Income through selling of former forest land
- Cleared land is often sold back to native populations by logging companies
• Income through residential and industrial development
- Land obtained through the cleaning of forests is often used for housing projects,
factories, and other industrial uses
• Agricultural growth through land expansion
- The most common reason for deforestation in South America is removing land to
create grazing land for cattle.
• Economic growth
- Exploitation of forests allows companies to make large profits off forests without
paying any of the indirect costs that are placed on surrounding populations.
- Industrial Risks
• Running out of forests
- If companies run out of forests, they will not be able to continue making profits.
• Running out of people to profit from.
- Extensive loss of forests may cause mass extinction, which would not leave
people to pay money.
• Litigation
- Extensive logging and deforestation can severely impact local economies,
opening up logging companies to litigation.
- Individual benefits
• Job availability
- In economically deprived areas, logging can open up new job opportunities by
creating land suitable for agriculture and industry.
• Agricultural growth
 - Increased demand for food pushes for increased supply, therefore new land
dedicated to agriculture will help meet the food demands of an increasing
human population.
- Individual risks
• Lack of atmospheric oxygen
- Nearly all of the earth’s oxygen comes from trees and rainforests. By killing off
trees, the amount of atmospheric oxygen gets severely reduced.
• Release of greenhouse gas emissions
- Forests are the largest store of carbon, and deforestation is the third-largest
source of green house gasses, causing 15 percent of global greenhouse gas
emissions.
• Reduced biodiversity
- Deforestation causes wildlife to decline. When forests are removed, wildlife is
deprived of habitat and becomes more vulnerable to hunting and natural
dangers. Since approximately 80 percent of the worlds documented species
are found in tropical rainforests, deforestation is a serious threat to the Earth’s
biodiversity
• Disrupted water cycles
- As forests are cleared, groundwater can no longer evaporate, which causes the
local climate to be much drier.
• Increase in soil erosion
- Deforestation accelerates the rate of soil erosion by allowing water runoff to
absorb important nutrients and displace fertile soil, severely reducing the
quality of the soil.
• Disrupted livelihoods
- Millions of people rely directly on forests through hunting and gathering and
harvesting forest products
- Environmental risks
• Because the human race depends completely and solely on the health of the
environment, all risks and negative effects that apply to individual people also
directly apply to the environment. Moreover, the inverse is also true. Everything
that affects the environment also directly affects human, animal, and plant life.
Therefore, environmental and individual ramifications are one and the same
(Conservation International, 2014).
- How this issue influences our local population
• Currently few direct impacts in the Pacific Northwest because the lack of
unsustainable logging.
• Because of the global nature of the environment, environmental damage that
occurs in other areas of the world also has significant repercussions in the Pacific
Northwest. One such ecological ramification is the direct impact of the Amazon
rainforest on the humidity of the Pacific Northwest climate (Princeton University,
 2013)
- Deforestation is an extremely complex socioeconomic, ecological, political, macro
economical, and global issue. As such, there is no simple solution. However, steps
can be taken to attempt to reduce the damage of unsustainable forestry practices.
One such step is to reduce global meat consumption, and as a result reducing the
amount of land needed for raising cattle.

Works Cited
"Forest Products." Deforestation. University of Michigan. Web. 27 May 2015

Kelly, Morgan. "If a Tree Falls in Brazil…? Amazon Deforestation Could Mean Droughts
for Western U.S." Princeton University. Trustees of Princeton University, 7 Nov. 2013.
Web. 27 May 2015.

"Help Fight against Deforestation." WWF. WWF Global. Web. 27 May 2015.

"Conservation International." Conservation International. World Wild Life. Web. 27 May

2015.

Rawles, Simon. "Deforestation." WorldWildlife.org. World Wildlife Fund. Web. 27 May

2015.