How does deforestation affect the climate?
The earth is wrapped in a blanket of protective gases, the most climatically significant being carbon dioxide. It lets the sun’s shortwave radiation through but traps longer waved infra-red radiation (heat) keeping the earth warm enough for life to exist. A huge quantity of carbon is held in forest vegetation, and when forests are cut down or burned for land clearance, as millions of hectares are, the carbon is released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide (CO2). Even rotting vegetation produces CO2. As the volume of atmospheric CO2 increases, so does the insulating effect on the earth, causing a rise in world temperatures: the “greenhouse effect.” Forest burning in Brazil was responsible for about 20 percent of greenhouse gases released in 1988. Locally, trees play an integral part in local climate through evapo-transpiration via their roots, trunks,and leaves. Half the Amazon’s rainfall is recycled this way. Trees also stabilize the soil and diffuse falling rain with their leaf cano
