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Deforestation in Brazil - Coggle Diagram
Deforestation in Brazil
Causes
Cattle
In addition to their belching generating vast quantities of methane, cows and their food (soy) take large amounts of land to produce. Brazilian rain forests are being chopped down to make room to produce beef.
Forest Fires and Other Natural Disasters
Though the majority of deforestation is a result of human activity such as agriculture, deforestation can be natural. Typically, these disasters only occur occasionally and are a normal part of the ecosystem. However, climate change has caused these disasters to become more frequent and extreme. This devastates wildlife.
Facts and Statistics
In Brazil, 4.2 thousand square miles of forest were destroyed in 2020
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Out of the past ten years, 2016 had the highest rate of trees being destroyed. Most of it was commodity driven.
Effects
Fires are used to clear forests quickly and efficiently. Their smoke can cause health problems for nearby people and results in an increase of green house gases in the atmosphere.
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Lack of plants causes floods. These floods destroy forests. This positive feedback loop is a vicious cycle in which deforestation causes floods, which result in more trees being destroyed.
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Farmers planting the same crops in the same soil repeatedly depletes it of minerals and eventually the soil becomes infertile. In nature, forests tend to vary the plants grown in one spot so that the soil remains fertile.
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Solutions
The government can set up protected areas or national parks where chopping down trees and farming is illegal. These laws must be actively enforced in order to work though.
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