Environmental Impacts
- Climate Change and Global warming:
Forests play a crucial role in keeping our planet cool. They absorb carbon dioxide(CO2) from the atmosphere – a gas traps heat in the Earth’s atmosphere. When we cut down trees, this natural carbon adsorbing system is lost. Even worse, when forests are burned or cleared, all the carbon stored in the trees is released back into the air, adding to the greenhouse gases. The extra CO2 makes the earth heat up faster, causing global warming. As temperatures rise, we see more heatwaves, floods, wildfires, and droughts – all of which hurt people, animals and crops.
- Air Pollution and Poor Air Quality:
When forests are burned, they release thick smoke and fine dust into the air. This causes air pollution, which can spread far and wide, affecting millions of people.
In many tropical countries, especially Indonesia, forest fires are not always natural- they are often started by landowners. For decades, this has been a yearly practice, releasing thick smoke that harms air quality and public health not just locally, but across entire regions like Southeast Asia CITATION Ott15 \l 4105 (Otto, 2015).
- Loss of Biodiversity:
One of the biggest environmental problems caused by deforestation is the loss of biodiversity. Forests are home to over 80% of world’s land animals, birds and many other species, especially tropical rainforests like the Amazon. When trees are cut down to make space for farms, roads, or cities, many animals and plants lose their natural homes. This leads to habitat loss, food shortages, and changes in the local climate, making it harder for species to survive. Larger animals like elephants, tigers and lion suffer the most because they need wide areas of land to move, find food, and space. This is very serious because every plant or animal plays an important role in keeping the environmentally healthy. Biodiversity also helps people by giving us clean air, fresh water, food and even medicine. According to WWF (2023), deforestation is putting over one million species at risk of extinction worldwide. A new fractional model for deforestation imoacts on wildlife species is proposed. Some researchers have proposed mathematical models based upon unknown nonlinear system of first order ordinary differential equations CITATION Qur19 \l 4105 (Qureshi, Sania, Yusuf, Abdullahi, 2019).