How does the Atlantic Forest affect people?

How does the Atlantic Forest affect people?

The forest also provides other important natural resources, including clean air and climate regulation, soil protection, pollination, food, medicine, and drinking water. In fact, 60% of Brazil’s population relies on water from the Atlantic Forest.

What is the present status of Brazil’s Atlantic Forest?

Five hundred years ago, the Atlantic Forest of Brazil covered approximately 330 million acres (about twice the size of Texas), but today more than 85% of this forest has been cleared and what remains is highly fragmented. Despite its diminished state, the Atlantic Forest still ranks as a global conservation priority.

How is Brazil help the Atlantic Forest?

Brazil can play a significant role in this effort by avoiding deforestation in the Amazon, but also by restoring the lesser-known Atlantic Forest. An area of the Atlantic Forest restored with native trees to improve biodiversity and produce sustainable timber.

What happened to the Atlantic Forest?

Almost 88% of the original forest habitat has been lost and replaced by human-modified landscapes including pastures, croplands, and urban areas. This deforestation continues at an annual rate of 0.5% and up to 2.9% in urban areas.

What is destroying the Atlantic Forest?

Hunting is one of the major causes of biodiversity loss there, and in some areas many of the trees are left standing, the habitat though shrunk is somewhat intact. The Atlantic Forest of Brazil is very different from the region’s more famous Amazon Rainforest. Over 85 percent of the Atlantic Forest has been destroyed.

Why is the Atlantic Forest being deforested?

While logging and conversion of native vegetation for croplands and cattle pastures have been the primary drivers of Mata Atlântica deforestation for centuries, the real estate market and “authorized” deforestation are now also reducing the number of trees in urban areas, mostly in the Southeastern region, said Mario …

Why is the Atlantic rainforest endangered?

Although very little remains, the Mata Atlântica is no-less threatened: logging for tropical woods, urban and rural sprawl, deforestation for agriculture and biofuels, charcoal collection, clearing for cattle ranching, hunting and poaching, and the simple isolation and small size of many of the forest fragments have …

Why was the Atlantic Forest destroyed?

An average of 34,720 hectares (347 square kilometers) a year, or 0.35 percent loss annually. Causes of Deforestation: Agriculture (primarily sugar cane and coffee), urban sprawl, cattle ranching, eucalyptus plantations.

What is being done to protect the Atlantic Forest hotspot?

Goals included improving reforestation with fast growing species for income and wood, restoring stream banks, reducing use of toxic agrochemicals, supporting new regulations and policies for watershed conservation, and constructing infrastructure for protected areas lacking basic services for park rangers and visitors.

How does deforestation affect the Atlantic Forest?

Deforestation of Atlantic rainforest areas can therefore jeopardize the biome’s carbon balance. This also contributes to the release of larger amounts of carbon from the forest into the atmosphere, Joly explained.

Why are so many Atlantic Forest birds close to extinction?

These extinctions were the result of habitat loss in combination with other threats. A further nine Atlantic Forest bird species are Critically Endangered, plus six from elsewhere in Brazil.