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Period: to
The rate of forest loss changed drastically.
19 million hectares were being cleared every decade.in 1850, losses were around 50% higher at 30 million hectares per decade.Population growth meant that today’s rich countries across Europe and North America needed more and more resources such as land for agriculture, wood for energy, and for construction. -
First Industrial Revolution.
Coal, railroads, and land clearing speed up greenhouse gas emission, while better agriculture and sanitation speed up population growth. carbon dioxide gas (CO2) in the atmosphere, as later measured in ancient ice, is about 290 ppm (parts per million). Mean global temperature (1850-1890) is roughly 13.6 -
Second Industrial Revolution.
Fertilizers and other chemicals, electricity, and public health further accelerate growth. -
World War I
governments learn to mobilize and control industrial societies. -
Deforestation and other ecosystem changes are recognized as major factors in the future of the climate.
"the world's forests were a significant player in global cycles of carbon and water. The conversion of forests to croplands since the early 19th century had given the first big contribution to the global rise of CO2. (Decades later, scientists realized that deforestation also contributed to cooling — for one thing, snow on exposed soil reflects more winter sunlight than a forest does — so the net effect of deforestation may have helped keep the 19th century cool.)" -
Global deforestation reached its peak
We lost 150 million hectares an area half the size of India during that decade. Clearing of the Brazilian Amazon for pasture and croplands was a major driver of this loss. -
Temperate deforestation peaked in the first half of the 20th century.
the forest loss in the temperate regions peaked much earlier than the global forest loss. In the first half of the 20th century, temperate forests reached their peak loss at 34 million hectares per decade, and by 1990 they had passed the ‘forest transition point’. -
wildlife destroyed
In the last 60 years, more than half of the tropical forests worldwide have been destroyed. The current scale and pace of destruction are alarming. In 2017, more than one football field of the forest was lost every second –the second-highest recorded since 2001. -
Period: to
Loss of tropical forests
global loss of tropical forests contributed about 4.8 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide per year (or about 8-10% of annual human emissions of carbon dioxide).