What effect could the felling and clearing of huge areas of forest have on the water cycle?
The water cycle is also affected by deforestation. Trees extract groundwater through their roots and release it into the atmosphere. When part of a forest is removed, the trees no longer evaporate away this water, resulting in a much drier climate. Deforestation reduces the content of water in the soil and groundwater as well as atmospheric moisture.Deforestation reduces soil cohesion, so that erosion, flooding and landslides ensue. Forests enhance the recharge of aquifers in some locales, however, forests are a major source of aquifer depletion on most locales. Shrinking forest cover lessens the landscape’s capacity to intercept, retain and transpire precipitation. Instead of trapping precipitation, which then percolates to groundwater systems, deforested areas become sources of surface water runoff, which moves much faster than subsurface flows. That quicker transport of surface water can translate into flash flooding and more localized floods than would occur with the forest cover.
