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Impacts of Climate Change on Australian

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Submitted By carl2222
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Q3 Impacts of climate change on Australian water resources
The earth has a very perfect hydrologic cycle. It maintains water balance one the earth, promotes the prosperity of earth. However, the human activities in recent decades has largely disturb the hydrological cycle. Between 1990 and 2000, Australia lost an average of 325,900 hectares of forest per year. Australia has about 0.19% deforestation rate (mongabay, 2012). Due to the colonization and urbanization, in 200 years, Australia has lost 25% rainforest, 45% of open forest, 32% woodland forest and 30% of malle forest in 200 years (Forestnetwork, 2003). The situation has improved a lot in recent years as the government release many new policies to protect the forest resources.
Forest can transport large amount of water into the atmosphere by plant transpiration. It replenishes the clouds and makes the rainfall. The rainfall brings water to the earth surface to refill ground water and irrigate the soils. It maintains earth water balance. However cutting forests can break this balance causes less rainfall, dry land and turns the forest into desert (WWF, 2015).
Another big concern is the CO2 emission. Plants can mitigate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions and release oxygen. The main purpose to cutting forest is burn the fuel. This process produces large amount of greenhouse gases. Deforestation makes the greenhouse effect worse. Australia are the highest greenhouse gas polluters, per-person, among the organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries (WWF, 2015). The greenhouse effect is the process that the atmosphere can absorb thermal radiations from the earth surface and re-radiated it back to the earth surface. The greenhouse effect can keep the earth warm. However, excessive greenhouse effect may cause the rise in temperature changing the global climate conditions. In 100 years, Australia has already warmed by 1°C (WWF, 2015).
Tree roots can anchor the soil. Without trees, soil can wash or move away freely. It may causes the vegetation growth problem (Livescience, 2015). The vegetation growth problem causes the reduction in vegetation area. It reduces plant transpiration and break the water balance. Also deforestation will increase the salinity of water and causes land degradation.
Water resource engineering is the profession that is responsible for the planning, development and management of water resources (CSCE, 2015). Water resource engineering involves irrigation, water distribution and hydrology. Deforestation will severely disturb the water cycle balance makes the precipitation lower. Since the rainfall is less, there will be no enough water resources for engineering. It may affect irrigation, water power plant, water distribution and so on.
Deforestation will have a severe negative impacts on hydrologic cycle.

A, Bradford, 2015. Deforestation:Facts, Causes&Effects [online] Available from:< www.livescience.com/27692-deforestation.html> [Accessed: 10 April 2015]

CSCE, 2015. Water resources engineering [online] Available from:< whatiscivilengineering.csce.ca/water_resources.html> [Accessed 11 April 2015]

Forest Network, 2015. Forest Facts [online] Available from:< www.forestnetwork.net/ForestFacts.htm> [Accessed: 10 April 2015]

Rhett Butler, 2006. Forest data Australia [online] Available from:< rainforests.mongabay.com/deforestation/archive/Australia.htm> [Accessed: 9 April 2015]

WWF, 2015. Threats Defrostation [online] Available from:< www.worldwildlife.org/threats/deforestation> [Accessed: 10 April 2015]

WWF, 2015. Where do Australia’s greenhouse gases come from? [online] Available from:< www.wwf.org.au/our_work/people_and_the_environment/global_warming_and_climate_change/science/australia_greenhouse_gases/> [Accessed: 9 April 2015]
WWF, 2015. Global warming and climate change [online] Available from:www.wwf.org.au/our_work/people_and_the_environment/global_warming_and_climate_change/ [Accessed: 8 April 2015]

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