Since the Neolithic Revolution around 12,000 years ago, homosapiens have destroyed ⅓ of all the world’s wooded land. This has been mostly by burning it down. If we hadn’t done that, it’s likely that we’d currently still be in the Pleistocene Epoch Ice Age because the fires and change in climate due to fewer forests caused global warming. Currently, we wouldn’t be enjoying a mild grey November afternoon in Great Britain, we would still likely be completely frozen under the BIIS.
However, we have very recently gone too far the other way and are now impacting species numbers to the point of it being a mass extinction event. In 2015, we hit 50% of all mature tropical forests having been destroyed and have warmed the planet to the point that it’s causing the greatest mass extinction of plants and animals since the Chicxulub Impactor wiped out the dinosaurs. It’s the sixth mass extinction event in the Earth’s history, called the Holocene or Anthropocene Extinction.
There’s been no giant meteor impact, no giant volcanic event, no mass icing event to make this happen… it’s been human activity that’s caused it.
Reducing mature tropical forests means carbon isn’t being locked into the wooded biomass (trunks, leaves, roots, soil and fungi growth off that system). It’s also taking habitats away. We have lost nearly ¾ of the numbers of all vertebrates on land and sea across the entire planet, since 1970 (just read that sentence again… staggering!). In Central and South America and the Caribbean, it’s 95% of all vertebrate numbers reduced since 1970.
We have degraded soils in arable land areas to the point of them growing foods with low nutritional values. We over-farm because of over-population and overconsumption.
Methane, nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide emissions and release due to animal husbandry, isn’t far behind the burning of fossil fuels for energy demand, as the greatest contributor to climate change.
Climate Change will be the greatest contributor to immigration to the Northern Hemisphere. With this, the new populations will get used to the Northern Hemipshere high meat diet and the growing high-meat-consumption world population will put even more demand on animal husbandry agriculture, making climate change worse and causing more mass immigration to cooler lands.
If we don’t get a grip of the climate then we’re going to make life extremely difficult for future generations. People are more worried about invasions, wars and bombs… but the environment is a bigger issue than any war.
Funnily enough, controlled fires are actually good for soil fertility. However, uncontrolled highly intense forest fires degrades soils. Most woodland fires now are occurring as uncontrolled wildfires due to the climate, and as they contribute to climate change, they also extend dry seasons and periods of the year that wildfires can occur.
Forest clearance also degrades soils. Stopping the cycle of the woodland systems takes away living and dead organic matter which takes away the nutrient value of soils and leads to soil erosion. Again, as well as not allowing carbon to be locked away.
In Great Britain, we have some of the lowest woodland coverage of land in Europe:
In our Southern part of North-West England, we have some of the lowest woodland coverage of land in Great Britain:
Low woodland coverage in Britain has lead to poor soil quality. Soil has degraded and eroded, the quality of the food that we grow and graze is decreasing and it is a contributor to poor health in humans with lack of nutrients and even a reduction in the quality, size and diversity of the microbiome in our guts, which is one of the most important aspects of health (arguably the most important).
In Manchester we have some of the most polluted air in Europe, as we have too much traffic due to too many people living here (and it’s constantly increasing) and the road network not being able to move traffic with any flow, with static cars pumping out emissions… added to other emission from other sources, but also too little woodland to lock carbon away.
www.bbc.co.uk