Naked Science Forum
Life Sciences => The Environment => Topic started by: MeganM on 24/01/2020 09:00:07
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Angelo has asked:
Did the clearing of trees in North America change the global climate?
Does anyone know the answer?
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I do not believe there has been extensive deforestation in north america in the last 500 years, much of the praries where clear which allowed for the north american ecosystem, alot like africas savanna. Elephants keep the trees in check there along with the herds of animals, so they did in north america. The north american ecosystem is fairy unique, a bit like the tornadoes they have there, probably for a similar reason. native peoples where not great farmers either. Remember that the usa only had a population of around 100 million around 1900, many of those in north east which still has plenty of forests.to put it into contect russia today has a similar population density, similar land mass, and similar locale of the major population. The steppes of earth are usually among the best farming land around.
https://www.livescience.com/31524-tallgrass-prairie-ecosystem.html
https://prehistoric-fauna.com/Pleistocene-North-America
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steppe
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Did the clearing of tree in North America change global climate?
There were some major changes in the north american ecosystem with the arrival of humans.
This resulted in the extinction of megafauna species
This happened around the time of the end of the ice age
So it's a bit tricky to disentangle cause and effect here.
- But humans have been tough on animals that were larger and bred more slowly: It was often a choice of "domesticate or perish."