the science of Deforestation

 Deforestation is the fancy way of saying "destroying the trees". 

Throughout history, humans have chopped down trees to make the land for housing and animal grazing, and wood.

Deforestation has altered landscapes all around the world, about 200 years ago 80% of western Europe was forested but today it is only 34% forested, and half of Northern America's forests in the eastern part of the content were chopped down from the 1600s to the 1870s

Today most of the deforestation is done for accessing remote areas in jungles and forests.
Slash and burn methods for agriculture and logging are used, where farmers burn large parts of forests to make space for agriculture and use the ash to fertilize the crops grown. But the land is only fertile for a few years, after that the farmers leave the land and go to another forest to burn and grow crops and the cycle repeats itself.

Tropical forests have also been cleared this way for logging and cattle, and most for rubber and oil palms. Since oil palm is a big industry thanks to logging.

10% of the forests are lost since the 2000s, and around 121,000 square kilometers were lost due to logging in 2019. 

Deforestation is a problem for the biodiversity of the earth because many plants and animals live in the forests that are burned down and cut down every year due to deforestation, as burning and chopping the trees in a forest can drive the animals out of the forests, and some to extinction.

Burning trees and deforestation in general are around 20% of emissions of greenhouse gasses globally. 

Furthermore, the loss of trees can also cause erosion in the soil, which is the weakness and stability of the dirt, since there are no trees to support the dirt, it becomes soft and easy to fall, and that in turn causes landslides. 

But not all hope is lost, thanks to conservation efforts, humans are replanting trees to combat the large tree shortage.