Any major deforestation effort will change at least the local ecology in ways that are often difficult to foresee. Given the mass and biodiversity of many rainforests, the changes extend beyond the local area to potentially affect the climate on other parts of the planet.

Removing 50 trees will not hurt any strong forest. Removing 5,000 trees will begin to have an impact. What is happening to the tropical and even some temperate rainforests far exceeds these numbers every year.

Locally, removing trees which supplied food and shelter to the indigenous peoples, immediately puts their food supplies in danger. The topsoil is usually unstable and erosion can remove significant portions of it before crops can be cultivated to anchor it into place.

As the forest shrinks, so does the rain it helps to generate. So, those areas that seemed so promising because of the huge rainfall totals, now become nearly desert-like. With more of the rainforests disappearing from the earth, the climate is being altered to cause deserts like the Sahara to grow larger. Areas that benefited from the abundant rain near the forests have often lost their ability to sustain crops without enormous amounts of irrigation.

Ultimately, the loss of the rainforests will help fuel more global warming and result in big climate changes that could threaten the food supplies in many parts of the world. Science forecasts changes in the ocean currents and sea levels that could change everything now known about what type of weather to expect on nearly every point on the planet.

A reliable food supply depends on understanding and the ability of predict within reason what each season will bring to a given region. Without this, food in many parts of the earth that are now well-supplied could become difficult to grow.

Learn more about this author, Allen Teal.
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