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... food, shelter, and fuel. Deforestation and degradation may contribute to regional and global climate imbalances. Forests play a major role in carbon storage; with their removal, excessive carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may lead to global warming, with many problematic side effects. Deforestation processes are, in general, more destructive in the tropics. Most forest soils in the tropics are far less fertile than temperate soils and erode with ease. This is because high rainfall leaches out nutrients from the soil, preventing them from building up. Agriculture in temperate regions has depended upon forest removal, capitalizing upon forest soil fertility. Most of England's woodlands were deforested by 1350. In continental Europe and North America, deforestation accelerated in the 18th and 19th centuries to clear land to grow food for industrial cities, and to meet fuel and construction needs. Rising agricultural productivity has since allowed much temperate farmland to revert to forest. From ...