GEOG 102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Evapotranspiration, Crop Rotation, Palm Oil
Document Summary
Palm oil plantations (borneo): building roads deforestation/logging expansion of agriculture. Red monkeys are greatly affected, as the trees are their home. Climatic effects of tropical deforestation on water balance. Atmosphere"s role in moving moisture from one end to the other. Main outcome of deforestation is a decrease in net radiation and in evapotranspiration which leads to less convection and cloud formation and thus a decrease in precipitation. Net radiation = incoming radiation - outgoing radiation; incoming doesn"t change but outgoing increases (due to albedo increases) Decrease in evapotranspiration results in lower water vapor content. Reduced convection leads to reduced cloud formation and thus a decrease in precipitation. More co2 releases via burning and less is sequestered in plants (reduced photosynthesis) leading to higher concentrations of co2 in the atmosphere. Process through which desert like conditions are brought about in areas where they did not previously exist. It is a problem in arid/semi-arid regions especially.
