Question

How does deforestation lead to reduced rainfall?

Answer 1

Hint: Deforestation is the decrease in areas of forests across the world, which are lost for mining, urbanization or agricultural cropland. Togo, Honduras and Mauritania are worst affected by deforestation. For short-term benefits, humans are cutting trees, sacrificing the long-term benefits of forests. Agricultural expansion, infrastructure development and extraction of woods are the major causes of deforestation.

Complete answer:
Deforestation leads to reduced rainfall.
Deforestation lessens the natural recycling of moisture from soils in the forest. Vegetation recycles the moisture and causes rainfall. When forests are replaced by pastures, there is a negative impact on water recycling, which leads to mitigation of atmospheric humidity, thereby impeding the precipitation.
Deforestation leads to an increase in the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, through which global warming arises. The increase in global warming decreases the natural water recycling.
Through roots, trees intake water from the soil. The absorbed water through the transpiration process goes into the atmosphere as water vapor and later, the water vapor comes back into the earth as rain. If trees are cut, amount of water vapor going to atmosphere will be decreased and there will be steep decline in rainfall.
In addition, decrease in the count of trees will lead to a decline in the photosynthetic process, which again increases the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, causing global warming. This leads to an increase in temperature, which may cause reduced rainfall. Also, the oxygen level will be decreased through decreased photosynthesis. Further, deforestation causes soil dryness.

Note:
Forests still cover \[30\% \] of the world's land area, but \[17\% \] of Amazon Forest has been destroyed. Water holding capacity of soil is dependent on the number of trees in the forest. If trees are cut, water holding capacity of soil decreases, which is the reason behind frequent flooding nowadays. Trees emit oxygen by absorbing carbon oxide by living organisms. Besides, trees are interceptors in the precipitation process.