Flooding
The socio-economic impact resulting from a decline in productive capacity due to ecological interactions does not remain localized, especially when forest cover is lost in a watershed. The soil's water retention capacity is lost and the release of rainfall becomes erratic; periods of floods followed by droughts become the norm. Farmers in the valley lands of Southern Asia are particularly vulnerable as rivers such as the Ganges, Brahmaputra and the Mekong no longer supply regular amounts of irrigation. Flooding in the Ganges Plain provides a graphic example of the associated costs of deforestation. As the foothill forests are cleared for agriculture, the 500 million people in the valleys become more vulnerable to flooding. During the 1978 monsoon, India suffered losses of $2 billion and hundreds of people drowned. 11