Sample Deforestation-Forestation Research Paper. Browse other research paper examples and check the list of research paper topics for more inspiration. iResearchNet offers academic assignment help for students all over the world: writing from scratch, editing, proofreading, problem solving, from essays to dissertations, from humanities to STEM. We offer full confidentiality, safe payment, originality, and money-back guarantee. Secure your academic success with our risk-free services. Deforestation is a major global concern. Despite increased attention to various facets of this issue, however, considerable uncertainty rests in estimates of the rates, the impacts, and the driving forces of deforestation. This research paper reviews these issues. It focuses primarily on tropical deforestation because of its greater pace and strong social and environmental implications. Three levels of causes are discussed: the agents or proximate causes, the immediate causes, and the underlying causes. The central thesis is that deforestation occurs because it is profitable to some individuals and groups. 1. Past And Present Deforestation 1.1 Rates And Definitions About one half (47 percent) of Earth’s forest cover of 8,000 years past is gone (World Resources Institute 1998), largely the impress of human activity. Yet forests continue to occupy about one quarter of the land surface, or 3.5 million hectares (ha). Fifty-five percent are located in developing countries, primarily in the tropical world. From 1980 to 1995, developing countries lost some 200 million ha (10 percent) of their forest, while developed countries gained about 20 million ha (FAO 1999). Deforestation is defined as the permanent transition from forest to all other land categories. Forests in developing countries, according to the FAO, are ecosystems with a minimum of 10 percent crown cover of trees and/or bamboos covering a minimum of 0.5 ha. Estimates of global deforestation, however, are normally based on national forest inventories which use self-defined measures and data of varying quality and commonly differ from estimates derived from satellite data. Many countries use simple extrapolations or model-based estimates. The uncertainty of deforestation estimates, therefore, must be emphasized. Deforestation is distinguished from forest degradation or a reduction in tree density and/or increased disturbance resulting in loss of forest products and forest-derived ecological services. Selective logging— practiced properly—does not qualify as deforestation, but might lead to forest degradation. In addition, roads constructed for this purpose make forests accessible and may attract migrants, precipitating deforestation. 1.2 The Forest Transition Deforestation in developing countries and reforestation in developed ones form part of a global pattern in land use that some envision as a long-term, temporal sequence. The forest transition captures this sequence, referring to a pattern of forest use initially leading to deforestation during extractive and agrarian episodes and subsequently to reforestation as economic activity shifts to industry and services (Grainger 1995, Mather and Needle 1998, Rudel 1998). Most developed regions of the world incurred rapid deforestation in the past, closely linked to the growth in their populations. With industrialization and urbanization, however, forest land subsequently increased beginning in the nineteenth century in Europe and the twentieth century in the The post Deforestation-Forestation Research Paper appeared first on iResearchNet .