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Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Share Flipboard Email. Sadly, it has taken only a century of human intervention to destroy what nature designed to last forever. The scale of human pressures on ecosystems everywhere has increased enormously in the last few decades. Since the global economy has tripled in size and the world population has increased by 30 percent.
Consumption of everything on the planet has risen- at a cost to our ecosystems. Today, more than half has already gone up in smoke. Unbelievably, more than , acres of rain forest are burned every day.
That is more than acres lost every minute of every day, and 78 million acres lost every year! More than 20 percent of the Amazon rain forest is already gone, and much more is severely threatened as the destruction continues. It is estimated that the Amazon alone is vanishing at a rate of 20, square miles a year. If nothing is done to curb this trend, the entire Amazon could well be gone within fifty years.
Massive deforestation brings with it many ugly consequences-air and water pollution, soil erosion, malaria epidemics, the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the eviction and decimation of indigenous Indian tribes, and the loss of biodiversity through extinction of plants and animals. Fewer rain forests mean less rain, less oxygen for us to breathe, and an increased threat from global warming.
But who is really to blame? Consider what we industrialized Americans have done to our own homeland. Other industrialized countries have done no better. But despite the levels of deforestation, up to 60 percent of their territory is still covered by natural tropical forests. In fact, today, much of the pressures on their remaining rainforests comes from servicing the needs and markets for wood products in industrialized countries that have already depleted their own natural resources.
Phytoplankton is said to consume carbon dioxide on a scale equivalent to forests and other land plants. According to National Geographic, one type of phytoplankton, Prochlorococcus, releases countless tons of oxygen into the atmosphere. Sylvia A. Earle, a National Geographic Explorer, has estimated that Prochlorococcus provides the oxygen for one in every five breaths we take. Science Focus calculated the amount of oxygen a person would consume from a tree per year. A mature sycamore tree might produce kg of oxygen a year.
A human breathes about 9. According to the report's calculation, about kg of oxygen per year is consumed by one human, which is around seven or eight trees' worth. Environment As the EU targets emissions cuts, this country has a coal problem. Paid Content How Hong Kong protects its sea sanctuaries. History Magazine These 3,year-old giants watched over the cemeteries of Sardinia. Magazine How one image captures 21 hours of a volcanic eruption.
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