How does exactly planting trees helps the environment? Is it possible that planting too many trees without planning it carefully would lead to bad consequences?
In: Biology
Hi — Trees are part of a cycle or a system if you will. Too few trees upsets the balance in nature or a given location e.g. a mountain; here are are couple of examples that may help you imagine:
1. In tropical mountains, too few trees may cause flooding below, because soil become too loose (no roots holding them) and this damage villages or surrounding areas
2. Too few trees where animals live can cause animals to lose food; same with larger animals that eat those smaller animals; humans also eats some or depend on those large animals
3. A more complex and possibly harder to imagine scenario is that trees “trap” our carbon emissions into the soil (e.g. while they’re alive and when they die). When we burn fuel, we release carbon (dead stuff millions of years ago) into the air, which causes things to warm up everywhere on earth (global warming; melts ice, makes seas higher and some land sink).
Trees also produce oxygen we breath. We obviously plant not because we already ran out, but preventing it before it becomes the case.
Again, its a cycle and a system; things can be quite complex from there and different people may have different interpretations about what happens when there’s too few trees.
PS: its takes hours or days to remove trees in case there was too much in a certain area, but takes decades to grow them.
For a start there are far too few trees. This is called deforestation and has been happening for decades.
Trees and other plants use carbon dioxide and sunlight to produce oxygen and water by a process called photosynthesis.
Without this process, we wouldn’t have enough oxygen on the planet to live.
Carbon dioxide is also a greenhouse gas. One of the big ones causing climate change.
The more trees we have the more oxygen and the less Carbon Dioxide.
So it makes the world a brighter better place.
Could there be too many trees? The answer to that is no, we’ve cut so many down over the years to make way for cities and cattle farms that we’d need to grow a hell of a lot of trees just to catch up to where the world was in terms of numbers.
That said, generally speaking you plan where you will plant things so that you don’t upset the balance of stuff.
Trees like all plants use carbon dioxide and release oxygen. Wood is about 50% carbon. There are few bad consequences. But of course you want to carefully plan it. For instance, you don’t want to burn the resulting wood. So grow species that can be used as a building or furniture making material once it reaches the end of its life.
Having more trees helps the environment, planting them only helps if they flourish. If you plant a magnolia seedling in the Arizona desert, you just killed a tree = not helping.
Fortunately, the people who organize reforestation projects choose the right sort of trees for the place they are reforesting. There are many, many places in the world that have vastly fewer trees than they would naturally have. So, you don’t need to be that careful to move the tree population in the right direction. If the lot containing your house your would naturally have 30 trees, and you plant 2, you’re not getting close to the “too many trees” level.
The only bad aspect is water usage, but that can be overcome by using trees suited to the climate (at minimum) or planting indigenous trees.
For example, there are loads of Australian blue gum (Eucalyptus) trees in South Africa, but they use a lot of water. They dry up riverbeds in some areas.
But most tree-planting initiatives would probably plant indigenous trees and keep their water usage in mind.
Having trees in urban environments decreases rain run off and therefore flooding downstream and helps shade lower buildings (decreasing the need for air conditioning). They also prevent wind from removing top soil and other nutrients that we prefer to stay in one place. They also encourage animals, improving the biodiversity of the area.
The problem with planting too many trees haphazardly can create issues of competition where the trees are battling each other for space and nutrients. Another issue with poor planning occurs when only one type of tree is planted, which leads to mass deforestation if a virus or pest attacks them. An example is the mountain ash which was once the only tree planted on suburban boulevards (when I was a kid). The ash borer came through and wiped out almost all of them (and the rest were cut down proactively). A mixture of trees may or may not prevent further pests from spreading, but it wouldn’t lead to an entire area from being decimated.
Trees produce about 260 pounds of oxygen a year… Trees, along with other organisms create the air you/we breathe. They’re also a habitat for animals. Nature doesn’t sit down and plan where trees are planted, humans callously cut down thousands of trees A DAY and we need to replant more than we cut down. In my opinion… we need more trees and less people. I’m not saying kill people to save the trees, but curb the human population and downsize through attrition, lessening the burden of countries trying to feed the masses, less pollution, crime and a slew of other demons that come with over population.
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