We use trees for paper, buildings, firewood, and so much more. How is there enough??
In: Engineering
Trees grows. Young forests grows by an average of 2-5% every year. That means we can cut down almost 5% of the worlds planted forests every year and still have the same amount of trees. A lot of these forests are in mountains, far away from cities and even farms. There are huge amount of these areas covered in forests. About 40% of the worlds habitable area is forests.
But this is still a huge issue. The amount of forest land in the world is decreasing. Even if forests can grow back at a rate of 5% a year we are cutting it down slightly faster. The way we do forestry today is not sustainable and have not been for over a hundred years. So basically there is not enough forests for everything we use wood for. Another issue is that this 5% growth rate is only true for young forests. The growth rates goes down as the forest matures. But this is where we get the biodiversity. Even the amount of carbon captured is much higher in older forests then in young. Trees grow first but most of the carbon is locked in the ground, mostly in fungi which takes over a hundred years to grow. The fungi dies when we cut down the forest releasing all the carbon back into the atmosphere.
Latest Answers