DEFORESTATION AROUND THE WORLD - India Environment Portal

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Deforestation Around the World
the region’s socioeconomic needs. This would stem and reverse the erosion of biodiversity
in the existing forest fragments in Mesoamerica. Ideally these proposed connecting corridors
would contain the biological communities that were originally present. However, most of
the current and proposed connecting corridors do not contain their original forest, but are
instead occupied by agricultural landscapes containing croplands, grassland and various
forms of degraded woodlands. Additionally, these regions have a varied topography of
altitudes ranging between sea level and 3000 m. The topography and land characteristics of
the corridors vary widely, from lowlands to high mountain peaks and dense-forest regions
to croplands and woodlands respectively. The establishment of fully functional corridors
will depend upon the regrowth of forests in many areas. However, the extent of
deforestation within Central America may already have had climatic consequences that
affect the stability and sustainability of currently protected areas and the proposed corridor
regions [Laurence et al., 2004].
Fig. 1. The map of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) 3 rd Assessment report
[IPCC, 2001], there are high chances of adverse impacts on the existing natural global
ecosystems, biodiversity and food supply due to the projected climate changes in the future.