by Jack Dini
 June 18, 2021
from Principia-Scientific Website

 

 

 

 

Treehugger / Getty Images

 

 


Forests are essential to life on Earth.

They provide a home to three-quarters of the world's plants and animals, soak up carbon dioxide, and provide food, fuels and medicines.

 

The world's great forests have long been recognized as the lungs of the earth.

They fix carbon and produce oxygen.

So, two items should come as a pleasant surprise:

  1. According to a recent assessment there are over three trillion trees on earth. The figure is more than seven times as high as the previous best estimate, which counted around 400 billion at most.
     

  2. An area of forest the size of France has regrown naturally across the world in the last 20 years. The restored forests have the potential to soak up the equivalent of 5.9 gigatones (Gt) of carbon dioxide - more than the annual emissions of the US, according to conservation groups. 1

Other encouraging forest news:

  • The Atlantic Forest in Brazil gives reason for hope, with an area roughly the size of the Netherlands having regrown since 2000.
     

  • In the boreal forests of northern Mongolia, 1.2 million hectares of forest have regenerated in the last 20 years, while other regeneration hotspots include central Africa and the boreal forests of Canada. 2
     

  • An international team has identified two areas in China where the scale of carbon dioxide absorption by new forests has been underestimated. Taken together, these areas account for a little over 35 percent of China's entire land carbon sink. 3

 



Naysayers

We often hear about the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest. Yet what was deforested last year was less than 0.3 percent of the Brazilian forest left standing.

 

Now does it still sound like an incredibly vast amount? 4

Protecting existing forests and planting new ones are surely good things to do. However, some scientists say we must not place too much faith in trees to save us.

 

In particular, last year one research group claimed we can plant a trillion extra trees and remove a quarter of the carbon dioxide currently in the air. These figures have been widely criticized as overhyped and unreliable.

 

Trees will definitely help us slow climate change, but they will not reverse it on their own. 5

 

 

 


References

1. W Crowther et al., "Mapping tree density at a global scale," Nature,2015: DOI: 10.1038/nature 14967

2. Helen Briggs, "Forests the size of France regrown since 2000, study suggests," bbc.com, May 11, 2021

3. Jing Wang et al., "Large Chinese land carbon sink estimated from atmospheric carbon dioxide data," nature.com, October 28, 2020

4. Joakin Book, "Playing fast and loose with numbers," aier.org, April 22, 2021

5. Michael Marshall, "Planting trees doesn't always help with climate change," bbc.com, May 26, 2020