Deforestation does cause desertification

In November 2016, Guardian published an article with the title “We have been almost buried: the Sudanese villages being swallowed by sand.” The article goes on describing the struggles of villages in Sudan’s River Nile State that have succumbed to desertification after years of extensive deforestation and worsening droughts. Villages that were once surrounded by forests so dense that you could get lost in them, are now disappearing under the sand. Deforestation is one of the leading human causes of desertification. Forests are being cut down at much larger scale than ever before, to be used as fuel, to provide products we use in our daily life, or to simply create more space for agriculture to sustain growing human population. When the trees and other vegetation in an area are gone, there are no roots that would hold soils in place, there is no canopy that would shield the ground from the direct rainfall or from the sun’s heat. The bare soil then easier dries out and turns to dust, which can be blown and washed away in a single storm. Dead trees in a desert Once the soil is degraded and the precious nutrients are lost, only infertile and lifeless swaths of land are left behind. And what’s more, without trees, even the local climate becomes drier due to the lack of water evapotranspiration from tree canopy, which reduces cloud formation in the region and results in less rain.