Facing the Facts: Impacts of Logging

Posted on March 18, 2014 by bejohnson

Negative Impacts

-alters species composition; many living things require trees (alive, dead or decaying)

-disturbances caused by logging operations; transport roads through otherwise undisturbed parts of the forests causing habitat fragmentation; presence of heavy machinery leading to noise pollution and lower air quality from the exhaust

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Logging_forest_in_New_South_Wales.jpeg

-habitat loss; directly removing trees leads to the direct removal of habitat

-stream disturbance; trees harvested around streams can lead to an increase in temperature of the stream; increased sediment in streams

http://www.flickr.com/photos/andrew_j_w/2355358550/in/photostream/

-soil erosion and depletion

-trees hold the soil in place, without them it erodes taking with them nutrients and organic materials, limiting regrowth

-removal of nutrients from the forests’ nutrient cycle

-disruption/change in the water shed

-increased possibility of forest fires

-a logged area is not as aesthetically pleasing as a wooded area

-do to the loss of aesthetic value, tourism to the areas could decrease, lowering the $ brought in by the industry

Positive Impacts

-make way for larger animals that require space to move in

-possible clearings for meadows

– If managed properly, lumber is a renewable resource that does not increase the carbon concentration in the atmosphere in the long term, unlike coal, which pulls from carbon that has been left out of the carbon cycle for millennia.

-if we don’t use our local lumber, we will just import it from somewhere; possibly from places with less strict controls and a lower ability to manage logging which could be even more disastrous to the globe as a whole.

– income to the owner of the timber, profits to businesses from wood products,

-increased tourism when cleared areas are converted to areas designated for recreation such as picnic areas or campsites