actor to the destruction of ideal landscapes. Historically, economies have been the main cause of landscape modification. European colonization and the drive to find raw materials and new markets led to massive landscape makeovers on every continent except Antarctica. For example the European expansion into the Americas led to a dramatic change in the landscape. When the Europeans arrived, North America was a thick forest of woodland. In order for the colonists to survive an incentive existed for landscape modification including woodland clearance for agriculture. Over hundreds of years and advances in technology and populations, North American boreal forests have been significantly destroyed severely depleting the number of species and the overall biodiversity. Another biodiverse and sustainable ideal landscape that has been recently hampered by the negative aspects of globalization are the Brazilian rain forests. The economic pressures of the world’s corporations to find more land to encroach have seen the destruction of millions of acres of valuable rain forest. Another problem facing the rain forests is from its own indigenous people. Their lack of agricultural knowledge including soil preservation, erosion and turnover has led to harmful farming tactics like slash and burn. This has caused the loss of biodiversity and has decreased the long-term sustainability of the rain forests.Fortunately, the human race has developed enough to realize that the destruction of these ideal landscapes across the world will eventually have an adverse effect upon humans themselves. Advancements in technology, medicine, and communications have created a medium for landscape conservation. The discovery of valuable species of both plant and animal for medicinal uses have been one of the largest factors in the movement to preserve and protect the remaining acres of the rain forests of the world. Information, such as the rain forest...
