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.
Latest Answers