Climate Change Practice Test

Forests are major carbon sinks that continuously remove CO2 from the atmosphere through photosynthesis and store carbon in living trees and in soils. When deforestation occurs, that storage capacity drops and the carbon once held in vegetation can be released back into the air as CO2, especially if the cleared wood is burned or decays. With less foliage to take up CO2, atmospheric CO2 concentrations rise, and because CO2 is a greenhouse gas, more infrared radiation is trapped, leading to higher global temperatures. The other ideas don’t fit because soil absorption of CO2 doesn’t increase with deforestation (often the opposite happens, as soil carbon is disturbed and lost); there is a clear effect on CO2, not none; and ozone concentration is not the sole or primary pathway affected by deforestation.