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4. Land Use for Agriculture





      OBJECTIVES
      > To understand that chemical discharges may pollute land as well as air and water
      > To understand that many human effects on the land involve loss of wildlife habitat
      > To know that there are ways to reverse loss of wildlife habitat




     Many of the pollutants described have an effect on Deforestation is also a result of clearing land so
     land, as, well as on the air or water.                  that  natural  resources  (e.g.  oil  in  the  Amazon
     Pollution also includes the loss of wildlife habitat basin and copper in Zaire) can be extracted.
     that results from human competition for land.           The  technique  used  to  clear  forest  today  is
     Removal of hedges                                       often called slash and burn. The largest trees

     Farmers  remove  hedges  to  increase  the  area        may  be  removed  for  sale  as  timber  for
     where  they  can  grow  crops.  The  benefits  of       furnishings  but  the  less  valuable  woods  are
     hedgerows  as  habitats,  and  the  reasons  why        simply  chopped  down  (slashed)  and  then
     farmers  feel  justified  in  removing  them,  are      burned.  The  humans  using  the  land  gain  a
     outlined below.                                         short-term  benefit,  but  the  damage  to  wildlife
     Deforestation                                           habitats is immediate and humans also suffer in
                                                             long  term.  Newspaper  and  television  headlines
     The  removal  of  woodland  provides  firewood,
                                                             emphasise the loss of forest in tropical areas of
     building materials, cleared land for crops such as
                                                             the world, but it should be remembered that the
     palm oil or for grazing of cattle. For our first settler
                                                             most of the UK was once forested! Some of the
     ancestors, it also removed the habitat of predators
                                                             penalties  of  large-scale  deforestation  are
     of domestic animals.
                                                             illustrated below.






































           9         Learning Module Organisms and Their Environment | Class 11
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