Page 18 - e-Learning Modul Based on ESD (Environment)

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