Environmental Science

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One of the most important natural resource on earth are trees. Trees are undeniably one of most essential parts organisms and key a huge role in the survival the human race. Even though most people vaguely know the importance of trees, they are still being cut down at a terrifying rate. Throughout the world, about 900 million trees are cut down annually, as of 2014. That equates to about 2.47 million trees cut down every day. These trees are being used to make papers and furniture. And sometimes entire forests are cleared to get to the minerals and oils in the soil under them. Without tree humans would not be able to survive. When we cut down trees we are not only killing the tree but everything else around it. When deforestation occurs, animal habitat is lost which decreases biodiversity and shrinks food webs. This makes the system less resilient which cause many precious animals to go extinct. This process doesn't only negatively affect animals but it impacts humans even more. When trees are cut down, all the leaves on them die. Leaves are very important because they contain palisades that have chloroplast. Chloroplast conduct photosynthesis which is a vital exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide. Without this exchange, humans would not have any oxygen to breathe, because there are no trees to convert the carbon dioxide into oxygen. Also, with the current amount of carbon being released into the environment due to industrialization, trees become more crucial everyday. Instead of cutting forest down and releasing more carbons in the process, we as humans should appreciate them more by recycling paper products when we are done with them because if every Canadian recycled just one-tenth of their newspapers, we would save about 25,000,000 trees a year. This will benefit everyone.