PATTERNS OF TROPICAL DEFORESTATION

作者：K. S. Murali, R. Hedge · 年份：1997 · 被引用次数：18 · 研究领域：Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management、Forest Management and Policy、Economic and Environmental Valuation

MURALI, K.S. & HEDGE, R. 1997. Patterns of tropical deforestation. In the recent past, there have been worldwide efforts to conserve tropical forests and forest resources for the future of mankind. Unfortunately, deforestation is taking place at an alarmingly faster rate all over the world than ever before. It is estimated that nearly 1.8 per cent of the forests are being degraded every year. The major threat to deforestation is considered to be the growing human population. An attempt is made here to provide a comprehensive analysis to show the relative contribution of several demographic and economic factors contributing to deforestation such as evaluating the role of population density, population growth rate, extent of forest area, total land area and foreign exchange earned through export of forest products in deforestation . Data on total geographical area, forest area, population density, export of forest products and population growth rate of 141 countries over different continents were obtained from the year book published by World Resources Institute and were analysed to understand the relation among these parameters on deforestation . Our analyses reveal that the deforestation was highest in South American countries followed by Asia. Surprisingly, although Europe had high population density, the deforestation rates were very low. This pattern is argued as the consequence of import of many forest goods from tropical countries rather than using their own resources or...