Logging & Deforestation

Many of the world's original forests have been logged. Many of the tropical rain forests that remain are currently the site of logging because North America and Europe have already harvested many of their trees.  Trees have been harvested for construction, wood, and paper products. Forests are cleared to create more farmland and grazing pastures for livestock.  Logging operations also clear trees to create roads to access more and more forest land. 


Logging removes trees that protect the ground from soil erosion. The tree roots hold the soil together and the tree canopy protects the soil from hard falling rain. Logging results in the loss of leaf litter, or dead leaves, bark and branches on the forest floor; leaf litter plays an important role in protecting forest soils from erosion and regenerating top soil. Soils eroded from logged forests clog rivers and lakes, fill estuaries, bury coral reefs, thereby destroying whole ecosystems. 


There are different logging techniques with varying degrees of environmental impact: 

  1. Selective cutting -- allows most trees to remain to minimize impacts to habitat and loss of soil. In this method, single trees or groups of trees are removed from an area. 
  2. Seed tree cutting -- removes most trees, but leaves a few to scatter their seeds to regrow the forest.  Causes destruction to habitats and increases soil erosion, and also leads to loss of forest diversity. 
  3. Strip cutting -- trees removed in large swaths, but timed so that only one area is logged at a time, to maintain some forest habitat and control soil erosion. 
  4. Clearcutting -- most destructive to ecosystems and soil erosion; when a whole area of forest is logged of all its trees. 


Deforestation is important because forests act as carbon "sinks", or places where excess carbon is stored, rather than being released to the atmosphere where it contributes to Earth's greenhouse effect. Also, many forests contain huge biodiversity; tropical rain forests contain species of plants and animals that have not yet been identified. 


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Source: USOE OER Resource Guide for Earth Systems, 
Last modified: Tuesday, 17 January 2017, 7:06 PM