Interesting info on deforestation in Haiti:
"The island nation suffers from one of the highest rates of deforestation in the world. This is troubling for a number of reasons. The loss of nearly all its trees promises to amplify how dramatically earthquakes, hurricanes, and other periodic natural occurrences impact Haitians, to say nothing of deforestation's impoverishing legacy of erosion and climate change on local scale (less moisture). Without trees holding the soil in place, a heavy rain let alone a hurricane or an earthquake can easily cause mudslides on the island's steep slopes.
Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the same island in the Caribbean Hispaniola. Both countries are at the same latitude and, generally speaking, the same climatic conditions prevail.
But one country, the Dominican Republic, has lush forests. The other, Haiti, is almost completely brown and bare. The stark difference is visible from high above one side green and full of foliage, the other bare.
Here's a photo from NASA and another from a National Geographic story in the 1980s.
Fewer than 100,000 acres of forest remain in Haiti, a country that was three-quarters tree-covered when European explorers first arrived 500 years ago. The nation, the poorest in the Western Hemisphere, has lost perhaps 98 percent of its tree cover, one of the worst cases of deforestation in the world."
Loren
