Table of Contents:
- What is forest
- Forest status in India
- Cause of deforestation
- Consequences of deforestation
- deforestation cause drought
- deforestation causes the flood and groundwater depletion
What is a forest?
As per the food and agricultural organization(FAO), the forest is the land area of at least more than 0.5 hectares having a minimum of 10 % of tree canopy cover without agriculture and human settlement.
As per the forest survey of India, 2 % of global recorded forest cover is in India with 10 nth positions in the world. Russia has the highest forest wealth in the world with 20 % of global forest cover.
As per the forest survey of India, the 'forest cover' includes tree canopy density having more than 10 % and more than 1 hectares in areas, irrespective of ownership.
Deforestation means clearing of forests and using forest land for other purposes.
There are mainly two reasons for deforestation:
- Human cause:
- Clearing lands for deforestation and Building houses and factories
- Making furniture
- Highway roads
- Mining
- Using wood as fuel
- Natural cause:
- Forest fire
- Severe drought and flood
- Desertification
- Increase temperature and pollution levels on earth.
- Increase carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
- Depletion of groundwater level
- This leads to the extinction of some organisms and disturbs the balance of nature.
- Rainfall patterns changes
- It leads desertification as fertile of soil get depleted, less humus leads to fewer fertility leads to gradually converted to the desert.
- Increase the chance of natural calamities such as floods and drought.
- Soil erosion increase
- The physical property of soil such as humus content changes.
- Tribal people livelihood
- Animal bore disease
How deforestation cause drought and flood?
Fewer plants mean less photosynthesis means less absorption of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere leads to an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. As a result, leads to trape more heat in the atmosphere in the atmosphere leads to global warming that causes disturbances in water cycles which may cause drought.
How deforestation cause flood and groundwater depletion?
Deforestation leads to a decrease in water holding capacity of the soil and groundwater recharging decrease leads to flood and depletion of groundwater tables.
For the detailed explanation, watch the below video:
ConversionConversion EmoticonEmoticon