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Deforestation - National Geographic

Deforestation Article

Deforestation is the action of cutting down large amounts of forests. Today the forests still cover 30% of our land, however within 100 years all rain forests could disappear if nothing is done against it.

Forests are cut down for money, agriculture, paper products, access of forests and growing of urban sprawl. Sometimes also nature causes deforestation by wildfires.

Deforestation causes extinction of many species, it drives climate change and worsens global warming.

The best solution would be to stop cutting down trees, however that will not be possible, as the financial realities show. The better solution is to balance the cutting by adding new trees and eliminating clear-cutting.

Communication of Message:

This article is only a overview of the issue, however there are many suggestions for more detailed articles and articles that specify the various issues that come with deforestation. Even though its only an overview the article still has a lot information about deforestation.

The article uses many facts to support its points and for each fact there is a small explanation such as that the forests still cover 30% of the earth but that each year forests of the size of Panama are cut down. The language is very simple and the points made are right to the point, so all the issues are mentioned and explained shortly and not too detailed. It offers many examples of real life situations so that the reader can make an image in his mind of the situation. Because the article is from the national geographic, which is very engaged in all environmental problems, the sources are reliable and up to date.

Write a short poem:

Chop chop chop,

another tree just dropped.

The killing of trees must stop

and new ways must be adopt.

Providing homes for the people there

producing paper products for us

giving space for agriculture everywhere

wanting to access the forests with a bus

Not seeing that this is the cause

for the animals to die

the climate to rise without pause

and global warming to worsen in time

The simple solution would have succeeded

but how is it going to help us

if paper is always needed

we need to adjust

We need to work slowly

balancing each tree cut

stopping clearcuts wholly

but planting new life with rush.

Compare your poem and the article and contrast different ways they develop the message about the same issue.

the main message of the article is to raise awareness about the issue by introducing the reader to the major problems, causes and solutions. The main message of the poem is to stop deforestation because of the causes and also how we should do that. Both are very direct and give the exact information, without hiding it behind any metaphors or others. The poem starts with an onomatopoeia to describe the sound of a tree falling to introduce the subject, the text however immediately starts by giving the reader facts about deforestation. There is almost no introduction to the subject in the text but it talks about deforestation right away. I used almost the same order of subjects so I started with the seriousness of the issue, then I wrote the reasons, followed by the causes and at the end the solution. Obviously the text has more detailed information since it contains facts and numbers, which I did not include in the poem because I wanted to make the poem more general because too many facts in a poem could make it boring and not fluent.

Overall both text and poem talk about forestation and its seriousness, both are very direct and try to make a change.

Blog compared to Article

I think that the first thing that I noticed was the structure of the blog compared to the article. The article follows the scheme of reverse pyramid, which means that at the beginning the information does not contain much detail but each paragraph adds in detail. The blog however is shorter overall and only contains the general information without too much detail.

The next thing is that the blog post is much more personal, it uses many exaggerated adjectives to explain the situation. The article instead, uses more facts or quotes to support its information.

Another obvious part is the visualization of the subject. The blog has two pictures and they are more effective than the picture of the article which is very small and positioned in the left corner, to see the picture you have to click on it again which most people probably don't do.

Deforestation in BrazilBoca do Acre | Create infographics

I tried to show the deforestation improvements in Brazil in the last few years because of the help of some important programs and organizations. However I also wanted to show how in the last 2 years in some regions the deforestations results are rising again. I decided to use this platform because I think info graphics can easily show the information without needing too much text or explanations and because they make the information more interesting because they use graphs and pictures instead of many words. 



Blog Task: Picture Text type

I chose these two images to communicate deforestation because both, especially the second one show the clearly what the message is and how it affects us. In the first picture there Tarzan jumping off a tree and wanting to jump on the next tree, however there is no tree to jump on, because of deforestation. Tarzan is a very famous kids story and it awakes childhood memories in us which makes it easier to relate to. Tarzan is famous for jumping or swinging from one tree to another and cutting trees is like killing Tarzan, which we don't want since we have a relationship with that character.
The second picture shows a forest which is almost stranded in a large platform of grass. The forest is in a shape of our lungs. The right part of the lungs is being destroyed by humanity, and so our lungs are destroyed as well. The picture immediately tells us that if we destroy the forests we destroy our health and we won't be able to breathe. It's every humans instinct to stay alive this is why we can connect with this picture because it scares us by saying that we are killing ourselves by killing the forests. I think this picture is a fantastic picture, it even has a road that goes from the lungs into the nature, to show even more the connection between the trees and the breathing.

I chose this picture as the less effective picture because in contrast to the previous two images it does not have a clear message and there is no clear connection between deforestation and the soldier laying on the ground. Only by reading the small and short message at the bottom rights someone could figure that this picture is about deforestation. Even though a picture should make it possible to reflect on, I think that this picture is too hard to understand. In the pictures with the lungs its clear why the deforestation impacts us, but this picture does not show how a fallen soldier impacts us and the environment. Obviously if you have more time to reflect on it, the picture with the soldier also makes sense, and that the fact that it's a soldier and not a normal person also has a reason. However for a poster that someone looks at for 3-5 seconds this picture is not very effective.