Deforestation Amazon

Question 1

What is subsistence farming ?

Answer 1

Forest is cleared by small scale farmers who need land to grow food for themselves and their families

Question 2

What is commercial farming?

Answer 2

Forest is cleared to make space for cattle grazing or huge plantations

Soy - up to 250 000 km squared of former forest has been used for its production

Rise, corn and sugar cane are also grown

Question 3

What is logging?

Answer 3

Amazon has mahogany, which makes logging extremely tempting to both legal and illegal business

Question 4

What is road building?

Answer 4

The 4000km trans Amazonian highway connects Brazilian cost to Peru, Columbia and Ecuador, through the Amazon

New roads built for logging have opened up areas that were previously too hard to get to, destroying and threatening more of the forest

Question 5

What is mineral extraction?

Answer 5

Gold, iron and copper are minted and exported to help boost countries development, explosives are used to clear a path, and deep pits have been duf to reach mineral deposits

Question 6

What is energy development?

Answer 6

Building hydroelectric dams floods large areas of forest. The construction of the Balbins dam flooded 2400km squared

Question 7

What is population growth?

Answer 7

Population growth and migration to the area is putting pressure on the Amazon rainforest, especially since Brazilian government offers land in rainforest to poor people from overcrowded city’s e.g. many farmers have been settled along the the trans Amazonian highway

Question 8

Economic impacts of deforestation?

Answer 8

Economic development- farming has brought wealth to many Amazonian counties E.g. march 2018 Brazil exported 600 million in beef

The mining industry creates jobs for lots of people e.g. the Buenaventura mining company in Peru employs over 8000 people

Question 9

Impacts of deforestation - soil erosion

Answer 9

Brazil is losing up to 100 tones of topsoil per hectare each year due to soil erosion - this may lead to landslides and flooding in the future.

Commercial and subsistence farmers are then forced to find new areas to farm, leading to further deforestation

Question 10

Impacts of deforestation climate change?

Answer 10

Trees remove C02 from the atmosphere- the Amazon stores around 140B of carbon. Deforestation releases some of this as C02 which causes global warming