Research Final Draft:The meaning behind the forest

On 05 June 2011, the world environment day, a theme was put forward——forest: nature at your service. It seems those common plants around us are regarded and this is not a good news. One third of the earth’s land mass is covered by forests, and 1.6 billion people depends on forests for their livelihoods. Losing forests means we are destroying our earth. (Thesis:) Although humans have already realized that the value of the forest, the losing of the forest causes many environmental problems because forests stand for an important role in the climate change, forests are home to more than half of terrestrial species and forests help decrease the impacts of debris flow and floods, whilst helping control desertification of land.

The forest acts as heat and water pumps in the climate system, which likes the heart in our body. Bloods will bring the oxygen to our organs from heart and finally return to the heart. Forests release moisture into the atmosphere and it will return to the ground as rain. We all know we can’t live without heart, because our organs will die without oxygen. But in the common situation, we will get sick at first. For example, when we get a fever, our body temperature will increase. It sounds like the climate change. The environment system is like human’s body, the climate change is the performance of environmental deterioration. As a huge system; the earth can’t run without heart. So the forest really plays an important role in the climate change, especially the tropical forests, which are described as “the lungs of the Earth”.

Global warming is one of the biggest environment problems in the world and carbon dioxide emission can be seen as the main reason of global warming. As christenson, l. m., mitchell, m. j., groffman, p. m., & lovett, g. m. (2010) show it in their research “In 2007, U.S. forests offset more than 900 million tons or 12.7% of the nation’s CO2 emissions (Perschel et al., 2007; EPA, 2009). According to the EPA (2007), net carbon sequestration increased by 16% from 1990 to 2005, mainly due to an increase in the rate of net carbon accumulation in forests. Significant potential exists for forests to offset more CO2 emissions, as some could increase their carbon storage by as much as 50% (Yardley, 2009)”. So the forest plays an important role in absorbing the carbon dioxide.

When the forest is stopping the global warming, the global warming is also destroying the forest at the same time. For example, the temperature increase is one part of the climate change, and it will cause a huge influence in the environment. Daniels, T. L. (2010) indicates that the temperature of North American and the world have been increasing in the last century, the changes on local scales are more indicative of impacts to regional ecosystems (Hayhoe et al., 2006). These increases will increase the freezing temperatures, especially during nondaylight hours over the winter.

We can’t look to the forest to help us to prevent the global warming. Seppälä, R. (2009) says that climate change will change the distribution of forest types and tree species. Globally, under growth and fast growth scenarios, all forest ecosystems will have difficulties in adapting to the impacts of climate change. Forest ecosystem services are expected to be significantly altered, particularly in submesic, semi-arid and arid climates, where productivity could decline to the extent that forests are no longer viable.

So even we do nothing with the forest, it is still disappearing every day.

The forest is also the home of amount of species. According to the research, about 40 to 75 present species are living in the tropical forest, and there may be millions of species of plants, insects and microorganisms still not discovered in the tropical forest. For example, if We described the tree species diversity and floristic composition of a tropical seasonal rainforest located in Xishuangbanna, south-west China, a total of 1283 families, 125 genera and 207 species were recorded in this place(Lü, X. T., Yin, J. X., & Tang, J. W. 2010).Those species may contain many invaluable things such as medicines and foods. So the tropical forest is a collection of valuable things.

Why do amount of species decide to live in the tropical forest? They can’t live in the cold and dry environment. That’s why we can’t see coconut trees in the Alaska. Tropical forests provide a perfect environment for those species to live. However, because of the global warming, the temperature of the tropical forest is increasing. It also means we are losing the forest. Even in the tropical forest, the temperature is not the same. The center of the forest and the edge of the forest are totally different. The center of the forest has more plants than edge of the forest, so the humidity of in the center of the forest is stronger than edges, and it also release more heat. This small temperature different may cause a big problem for the forest. Different plants have different growing environment. Some seeds can’t grow up in the high temperature environment. For those forests that grow above the sea level, the influence of the temperature is more obvious. When the sea level goes up, the temperature will always go down. But the global warming makes the temperature around world goes up, and it makes some plants be hard to live in this sea level. What will happen is some plants will die, and some species will also decrease. So it is same as the butterfly effect, and we can’t ignore that the forest is changed by the global warming. In Good, P., Jones, C., Lowe, J., Betts, R., Booth, B., & Huntingford, C. (2011) research shows that the carbon dioxide that is produced by the forest is reducing those years. It means even we do nothing with the forest, the forest is still decreasing.

The hardest thing is that we can’t do much with the rainforest. Actually, almost all the forest can be described as an ecosystem. It is hard for us to change the structure of the ecosystem. What we can do is stopping destroying the environment. Although the forest can stop the global warming, it can stop the global warming forever. So how to control the carbon emission is still a big problem for us.

What about species? We know most of the species live in the forest, especially in the rainforest. It looks like human beings. We want to live in the warm and comfortable place, so do the species. In summer, we can use air condition to reduce the room temperature. In winter, we can also use heating system to keep the room temperature. If there is a place that the temperature doesn’t change or only change a little, that’s the place we want to live forever. So many people choice to live near the coast and it can explain that why only a few people live in Alaska. Animals also want to live in a comfortable and warm place, so they chose to live in the forest, especially in the rainforest.

Peter, K., & Andreas, H. (2004) also advised that there is evidence that tree recruitment in the tropics might be endangered in the future. Up to 80% of the dominant trees in South-East Asia belong to the dipterocarp tree family. Their recruitment mechanisms prevail over seed predation through mass flowering followed by mast-fruiting events on a 2–10 yr basis. The mastfruiting strongly depends on the El Ni˜no Southern Oscillation (ENSO) (Ashton et al., 1988; Curran et al., 1999). The anticipated temperature increase of about 1 ◦C proposed over the next 50 yr in the tropical regions by climatic change (Houghton et al., 2001) might change the time and frequency of the necessary low nighttime temperatures which trigger this mast-fruiting (Yasuda et al., 1999). Human pressure in the form of land-use change or tree logging might lead to the migration of huge populations of seed predators and thus the number of ingrowing seedlings might be reduced by several orders of magnitude (Curran et al., 1999).

The meaning of species shift to cool refuges is the amount of species in the tropical forest will decrease, and some species may extinct.

Another thing will make species decline is deforestation. From the history, the area of rainforest is always decreasing. For example, If we use the pictures from the Brazilian Amazon Basin for 1978 and 1988, deforestation, fragmented forest, defined as areas less than 100 square kilometers surrounded by deforestation (Giles, P. T., & Burgoyne, J. M. 2008, Skole, D.L. and Tucker, C.J. 1993). Until now, we can’t stop deforestation, and we still are losing forests every day.

Because of the deforestation, species don’t have enough places to survive. On the other hand, deforestation will also change the climate in the forestry. These two factors will also influence the species in the forestry. The research shows that the relative influence of land use and climate change on environmental conditions was examined using analysis of similarity and principal components analysis. Deforestation in the region has resulted in a decrease in suitable habitat of between 78% and 93% for the Atlantic forest birds included here. Further, Atlantic forest birds today experience generally wetter and less seasonal forest environments than they did historically. Models of future environmental conditions within forest remnants suggest generally warmer conditions and lower annual variation in rainfall due to greater precipitation in the driest quarter of the year.(Loiselle, B. A., Graham, C. H., Goerck, J. M., & Ribeiro, M. 2010). A

As the forest keeping the species in diversity, the forest is also protecting our land to decrease the impacts of debris flow and floods, whilst helping control desertification of land.

It is common to see debris flow around mountain areas. A debris flow is a fast moving, liquefied landslide of unconsolidated, saturated debris that looks like flowing concrete. The debris flow can carry many large materials such as clay, boulders, and also some woods. Debris flows are extremely destructive to life and property, and claim thousands of lives world-wide (wiki). We can’t stop debris flows, what we can do it to prevent debris flows. The effective way is to plant trees, so the forest can prevent debris flow effectively.

Debris flows generally form when material becomes unconsolidated and unstable. Most of the time debris flows may begin with the mud flow and it often happens in a raining day or storm. Those saturated materials can be set by plant’s roots. The root-solid system can strongly make solid become unmoved. Turk and Graham do a study about the relationship between roots and solid. The result shows plants’ roots can do a great job to prevent debris flows (Turk and Graham).

Another natural disaster is flood. Debris flows have a strong destructive power, but it always finds in the mountain areas. Floods may occur in the large areas. Humans always build their home around the river, because water can’t be replaced in their life. So compared with mountain areas, floods are more dangerous than debris flows.

Floods can be explained by water expansion. If a water system submerges land, we can call it flood. Flood can cause a huge effect on ours’ life. Flood damages property and endangers the lives of humans and other species. Rapid water runoff causes soil erosion and concomitant sediment deposition elsewhere. We may cost a lot to recovery what floods destroy. For example, financial losses due to floods are typically millions of dollars each year, with the worst floods in recent U.S. history having cost billions of dollars (wiki). There are also many ways to prevent floods, and forest is still a good choice. The root-solid system is still one of the reasons. It can help solid to store more water, and trees can stand as protective screen to prevent floods.

In conclusion, the forest stands for an important role on this planet. While we are producing more carbon dioxides, forests help us to absorb it; while we are hunting animals, forests give species a good place to live; while we are suffering the punishment from the natural, forests form a good protective screen to protect us. Forest can be described as a mother in this planet. But at the same time, she is becoming weaker and weaker. I can’t imagine the world without forest. It seems like the color of green has disappeared from the earth. So we need protect forests.

 

Work Cited

Peter, K., & Andreas, H. (2004). Simulating growth dynamics in a South-East Asian rainforest threatened by recruitment shortage and tree harvesting. Climatic Change, 67(1), 95-117. Retrieved from EBSCOhost

WRIGHT, S., MULLER-LANDAU, H. C., & SCHIPPER, J. (2009). The Future of Tropical Species on a Warmer Planet. Conservation Biology, 23(6), 1418-1426. doi:10.1111/j.1523-1739.2009.01337.x

Good, P., Jones, C., Lowe, J., Betts, R., Booth, B., & Huntingford, C. (2011). Quantifying Environmental Drivers of Future Tropical Forest Extent. Journal of Climate, 24(5), 1337-1349. doi:10.1175/2010JCLI3865.1

Seppälä, R. (2009). A global assessment on adaptation of forests to climate change. Scandinavian Journal of Forest Research, 24(6), 469-472. doi:10.1080/02827580903378626

Daniels, T. L. (2010). Integrating Forest Carbon Sequestration Into a Cap-and-Trade Program to Reduce Net CO2 Emissions. Journal of the American Planning Association, 76(4), 463-475. doi:10.1080/01944363.2010.499830

CHRISTENSON, L. M., MITCHELL, M. J., GROFFMAN, P. M., & LOVETT, G. M. (2010). Winter climate change implications for decomposition in northeastern forests: comparisons of sugar maple litter with herbivore fecal inputs. Global Change Biology, 16(9), 2589-2601. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2486.2009.02115.x

Lü, X. T., Yin, J. X., & Tang, J. W. (2010). STRUCTURE, TREE SPECIES DIVERSITY AND COMPOSITION OF TROPICAL SEASONAL RAINFORESTS IN XISHUANGBANNA, SOUTH-WEST CHINA. Journal Of Tropical Forest Science, 22(3), 260-270.

Giles, P. T., & Burgoyne, J. M. (2008). Skole, D.L. and Tucker, C.J. 1993: Tropical deforestation and habitat fragmentation in the Amazon: satellite data from 1978 to 1988. Science 260, 1905-1910. Progress In Physical Geography, 32(5), 575-580. doi:10.1177/0309133308096755

Loiselle, B. A., Graham, C. H., Goerck, J. M., & Ribeiro, M. (2010). Assessing the impact of deforestation and climate change on the range size and environmental niche of bird species in the Atlantic forests, Brazil. Journal Of Biogeography, 37(7), 1288-1301. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2699.2010.02285.x

Debris flow. (2011, November 14). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 08:45, December 13, 2011, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Debris_flow&oldid=460592620

 

Turk, J. K., & Graham, R. C. (2009). Soil Carbon and Nitrogen Accumulation in a Forested Debris Flow Chronosequence, California [electronic resource]. Soil Science Society Of America Journal, 73(5), 1504-1509.

 

Flood control. (2011, December 9). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 09:38, December 13, 2011, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Flood_control&oldid=464908752

 

Flood control in the Netherlands. (2011, December 11). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 09:58, December 13, 2011, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Flood_control_in_the_Netherlands&oldid=465303548

 

Forest. (2011, December 12). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 09:58, December 13, 2011, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Forest&oldid=465465437

 

Flood. (2011, December 7). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 09:58, December 13, 2011, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Flood&oldid=464574888

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