With all the talk about reducing carbon emissions no solutions or pending technologies talk about trying to develop a tree that could grow rapidly that could be used capture the carbon in itself. I think if we crossed like a dandelion with a tree like a cottonwood they would grow quicker and possibly grow in harsher soils. Genetically alter a argan tree so it grows taller or cross them with quaking aspens so they and spread about more in sandy regions allowing more plants to possibly take root and accelerate Africa’s attempt to create a green wall to keep the Sahara from advancing south.
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GMO trees are genetically modified organisms. This means that their DNA has been artificially altered in a laboratory. The most common modification is to make the tree grow faster. Other modifications include making the tree more resistant to pests and diseases, or changing the tree’s leaves so that they are a different color.
We can not just cross any plants we want, even with modern genetic engineering. The places where we have been able to genetically engineer crops there have been a single well understood protein from one species which have been encoded into the genes of another species. But there is no proteins which say “grow faster” without killing the plant in the process. And modern tree species used in plantations are already bread to grow very rapidly. A tree that would mature after 50 years will now grow to the same size in only 20.
But there are serious issues with trying to capture carbon in the atmosphere using tree plantation. Firstly the fossil fuel sources we use now have taken hundreds of millions of years to form while a tree usually rots or gets burned in less then a hundred. And a forest does not stop growing and absorbing carbon after 20-50 years when the trees mature. The process continues as the mycelia network grows, the trees get bigger, and more bacterial mass is added to the soil. It takes about 300 years for a forest to start releasing similar amounts of carbon as it absorbs. So a tree plantation only holds a fraction of the carbon that a natural forest does.
As for harsher soils this is often a condition that comes as a result of missing a fungal network with bacterias and protozoa in the soil. These are the organisms which binds the clay or sand particles together in suitable distances for the right amount of air and water to get between them, collects and holds water, dissolves minerals and distributes it around the soil. When you look at reclemation projects which turn barren wasteland into fertile soil a lot of this comes down to the soil food web rather then the types of plants you grow on top.
Tree growth rate is not really the problem. The amount of land kept as forest, or as undisturbed forest, is more of an issue.
We mainly need to plant trees when a forest has been harvested. If it’s been harvested once, it will probably be harvested again. If the trees grow twice as fast, the harvests will occur twice as often. This could be a benefit to the land owner and the forest product companies, but it doesn’t increase the average amount of carbon held in that forest.
If future harvesting of the forest is somehow prevented from happening, the growth rate of the trees is still not that important. If it takes 100 or 200 years for the trees to capture the carbon, it’s not that big a difference. Climate change is a looooooong term problem. It will most likely be with future generations for thousands of years.
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