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Devastating effects of deforestation
Last February, a remote farming village of Guinsagon in Central Philippines, met its apocalypse, when a portion of a mountain came down, burying this village in its foothills, in mud that was many meters deep. This landslide buried more that 1150 people alive and left the handful of survivors overwhelmed with fear. We have heard about mud slips or landslides but nowadays events of this proportion are becoming more common.
The Philippines government denied that logging was not the main reason for this disaster, since logging in this region had stopped a decade ago. But in reality deforestation is the main culprit in this case, even though it had stopped in this area, a decade ago.
Most of the forests in mountains are formed through a natural process called ‘Xerarch Succession ’. Mountains that are covered with forest now would have once been barren rocky areas with no vegetation. Simple forms of plant life like Algae and Fungi are the first ones to colonize these barren mountains either alone or in a symbiotic relation with each other. Lichens are simple form of plant that is formed by a symbiotic relation of algae and fungus.
Lichens are more common in barren mountains and after they die out they provide a small fertile layer at the top of the barren rocks that could sustain growth of bryophytes like mosses.
Once mosses and other bryophytes colonize the mountain their simple root structure break the upper surface of the mountain, over a period time. This result in the formation of a small layer of soil at the mountaintop and it is turned fertile by the decomposing organic wastes produced by the bryophytes. Now the conditions turn perfect for grasses and other herbs to take over from the bryophytes and start colonizing the area.
The herbs continue the disintegration of the rocks that results in a thicker layer of soil. Shrubs replace the herbs as dominant vegetation, when the soil layer is deep enough to support them. Finally the trees arrive when the shrubs breaks more of the mountain surface and provide conditions that are suitable for the growth of trees. Trees then slowly colonize the mountains and form a new ecosystem. This process could take a few hundreds of years to complete and this is how barren mountains get converted in to thick forests.
Logging results in the destruction of the trees that once broke down the ‘Solid’ rocks of the mountain, in to many smaller pieces with the help of their roots. The trees however hold these disintegrated rocks together with their roots. Once the roots of the chopped down trees decay, the disintegrated rocks loosens and during rains or floods water seeps in between the broken rock particles and acts as a lubricant that makes the rocks slip or move. As the rocks start to move they gain momentum and gather mass that ultimately results in a huge mountain slide as in the case of Guinsagon in Philippines.
Even though logging had stopped in these areas for a decade now, the damage was already done to the mountains, as the new vegetation of shrubs and trees do not have roots that are deep enough to hold the disintegrated rocks at depths. The present vegetation would have prevented the upper surface from sliding, with the help of their roots, but the rocks underneath, lubricated by water between their layers, would have caused this slide. The proportion of this event clearly shows that this is not an ordinary landslide but a huge ‘mountain slide’ that is undoubtedly caused by deforestation.
Events like this are likely to occur more frequently in future, as deforestation has already taken its toll on the forests in mountains and reforestation efforts would take hundreds of years to resurrect the damage done.
A.K.Siva
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