1. What is sustainable forestry?

Sustainable forestry means managing our forest resources to meet the needs we have today without interfering with our future generations' needs. Any management of the forest resource must include inventory and planning to provide the basis for evaluating and implementing the goals of the landowner. Sustainable forest management (SFM) is the management of forests according to the principles of sustainable development. Sustainable forest management uses very broad social, economic and environmental goals. A range of forestry institutions now practice various forms of sustainable forest management and a broad range of methods and tools are available that have been tested over time and space.

2. What is deforestation?

Deforestation is clearing Earth's forests on a massive scale, often resulting in damage to the quality of the land. Forests still cover about 30 percent of the world’s land area, but swaths the size of Panama are lost each and every year.

The world’s rain forests could completely vanish in a hundred years at the current rate of deforestation.

Forests are cut down for many reasons, but most of them are related to money or to people’s need to provide for their families.The biggest driver of deforestation is agriculture. Farmers cut forests to provide more room for planting crops or grazing livestock. Often many small farmers will each clear a few acres to feed their families by cutting down trees and burning them in a process known as “slash and burn” agriculture.

3. What are four important causes of tropical deforestation?

The single biggest direct cause of tropical deforestation is conversion to cropland and pasture, mostly for subsistence, which is growing crops or raising livestock to meet daily needs. The conversion to agricultural land usually results from multiple direct factors. For example, countries build roads into remote areas to improve overland transportation of goods. The road development itself causes a limited amount of deforestation. But roads also provide entry to previously inaccessible—and often unclaimed—land. Logging, both legal and illegal, often follows road expansion (and in some cases is the reason for the road expansion). When loggers have harvested an area’s valuable timber, they move on. The roads and the logged areas become a magnet for settlers—farmers and ranchers who slash and burn the remaining forest for cropland or cattle pasture, completing the deforestation chain that began with road building. In other cases, forests that have been degraded by logging become fire-prone and are eventually deforested by repeated accidental fires from adjacent farms or pastures.

Modern-Day Plague

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Deforestation is clearing Earth's forests on a 1) massive scale, often resulting in damage to the quality of the land. Forests still cover about 30 percent of the world’s land area, but swaths the size of Panama are lost each and every year.

The world’s rain forests could completely vanish in a hundred years at the 2) current rate of deforestation.

Forests are cut down for many reasons, but most of them are related to money or to people’s need to provide for their families. The biggest 3) driver of deforestation is agriculture. Farmers cut forests to provide more room for planting crops or 4) grazing livestock. Often many small farmers will each clear a few acres to feed their families by cutting down trees and burning them in a process known as 5) “slash and burn” agriculture.

Logging operations, which provide the world’s wood and paper products, also cut countless trees each year. Loggers, some of them acting illegally, also build roads to access more and more remote forests—which leads to further deforestation. Forests are also cut as a result of growing 6) urban sprawl.

Deforestation has many negative effects on the environment. The most dramatic impact is 7) a loss of habitat for millions of species. Seventy percent of Earth’s land animals and plants live in forests, and many cannot 8) survive the deforestation that destroys their homes.

Deforestation also 9) drives climate change. Forest soils are moist, but without protection from sun-blocking tree 10) cover. they quickly dry out. Trees also help perpetuate the water cycle by returning water 11) vapor. back into the atmosphere. Without trees to fill these roles, many former forest lands can quickly become barren deserts.

Removing trees deprives the forest of 12) portions of its canopy, which blocks the sun’s rays during the day and holds in heat at night. This disruption leads to more extreme temperatures 13) swings. that can be harmful to plants and animals.

Trees also play a critical role in absorbing the greenhouse gases that 14) fuel global warming. Fewer forests means larger amounts of greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere—and increased speed and severity of global warming.

The quickest solution to deforestation would be to 15) simply stop cutting down trees. Though deforestation rates have slowed a bit in recent years, financial realities make this unlikely to occur.