I researched more about deforestation today. I searched was a website called Earth Observatory and it was sponsored by NASA.
This was a decent article. It substantiated much of the information that I had from Wikipedia. It also provided some new, useful information. I found out that although tropical forests only cover 7 percent of Earth’s dry land, they are homes to half of all the species on Earth. I thought this was very interesting and made me think how many animals there must be in the rainforest (A LOT). Tropical forests have more species than any other ecosystem.
I also read about how rainforests have plants, animals, fungi, and bacteria that could possibly provide cures for cancer and other diseases. I already knew this, but it can help support my paper. The new thing I learned was that these plants, animals, fungi, and bacteria can improve the yield and nutritional quality of food. Per this article, this could be “crucial for feeding the nearly ten billion people the Earth will likely need to support in coming decades”.
The last piece of information I learned was that that the trees in the Amazon contain more “carbon than 10 years worth of human-produced greenhouse gases”. This means that when people clear the forests with fire, the carbon that is stored in the wood returns to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. This will increase the greenhouse effect and global warming. In addition, when the forests are cleared for crops or for grazing lands, the soils can become a large source of carbon emissions.
This article gave me some useful information that I will be able to tie into my final paper.
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3 comments:
Hey there my love!
First of all, I want to applaud you for finally picking a topic that you do not think you will get frustrated or bored by, however, I never knew you were passionate about such topic like deforestation.
Surprisingly, I do find your topic interesting. I was not aware that rainforests consisted of plants, animals, fungi, and bacteria that could possibly be cures for cancers and diseases. However, but now that I am aware, of course I agree with you. Why would someone want to get rid of something that could possibly save lives? But anyway, great choice for this course. I look forward to reading and hearing more about your topic.
Good blog girl!
-Ieysha
Hey JP!
i didn't know how interesting deforestation was. There was so much in this blog about deforestation that I had never heard of before. I had a question for you, do you know if scientists are working to find some of those plants and what not to find a cure for cancer, because I think that if scientists explored/researched the plants in the reainforests we could have that cure for cancer soon.
That's amazing how much oxygen is being produced by the trees in the Amazon. i personally think deforestation is the most pointless thing ever because saving a tree and going without as much paper or furniture or whatever they use it for, they could be saving the world from possible self destruction. i like this topic and will be interested in seeing the other side of the argument and how they justify themselves.
Katie--
I really like that you picked deforestation as your topic, because I think it is something that we in the U.S. do not hear a whole lot about. And it is particularly interesting to me because you and I are going to Costa Rica, and we will be helping to reverse this problem! :-)
Anyways, I did not know a lot of the stuff that you found out about it the article that you read. The possibility of finding cures for cancer is exciting, and it would be horrible if we destroyed something that could help cure something as horrible as that. The thing that scared me the most about cutting down the rainforest was what you said about the amount of carbon in the trees. It was so shocking to me that if we cut all the trees down then the carbon would turn into carbon dioxide and would contribute to global warming!
I really enjoyed this blog!
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