Forests have always been a source of green and clean energy. They are responsible for keeping the environment clean and contribute to removing the dangerous carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Moreover, the abundance of trees provides ample amounts of oxygen which are extremely essential for the air. Whenever there is an environmental degradation or a dip in air quality, it is advised to plant more trees and build man-made forests to avert all these destructive changes. However, the mismanagement of these blessings in form of forests can backfire and this is what is happening at the Amazon Forest.
Amazon is the world’s largest naturally occurring forest and has been responsible for improving the earth’s quality for years now. A study is published in the journal, Nature, which states that the forest is now giving off approximately 1.1 billion tons of carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and is responsible for rising temperatures on earth. This staggering amount of release depicts that the forest is now giving off more carbon dioxide than it is removing from the atmosphere.
This unnatural change is one of the unpleasant consequences of mismanaging the ecosystem and not respecting nature’s balance in the forests. The forest was cut down excessively for agriculture and other ruses like residence and industrial setups. Numerous trees and the natural habitats of animals have been destroyed in this pursuit. Recently, forest fires have also contributed to change the natural setting of the forest, causing more emissions of carbon dioxide than before.
The eastern part of the forest is officially undergoing deforestation now. The process of interference from destructive mass human activities has been going on for 40 years and now the area is exposed to more forest fires than any other area due to immense dryness and the inability of trees to use up the released carbon dioxide.
A study showed that areas having deforestation more than 30 percent have 10 times more CO2 emissions than the ones with 20 percent or less deforestation. The fires gave away around 1.6 billion tons of CO2 while the trees only absorbed around 0.5 billion tons. This shows an appalling level of CO2 in the region and measures must be taken to revert this change.
