Global warming results from excess heat-trapping greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the earth's atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is the most abundant GHG and, therefore, is considered the primary driver of rising atmospheric temperatures. GHG emissions are also called carbon emissions.
The daily level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere exceeded 400 parts per million for the first time in human history in 20136. Despite valiant efforts made so far, the amount of daily carbon dioxide is hovering over 420 ppm.
The changing climate has far-reaching consequences for human society. Unfortunately, the consequences are not fairly distributed. Although developed countries are the major contributors to climate change, the effects are felt more in developing countries.
Climate change impacts our environment, economy, physical well-being, and the fabric of society. The rise in sea level increases flooding incidents in coastal communities. Extreme weather events like hurricanes, forest fires, floods, heat waves, and tropical storms are lasting longer and happening more frequently.
Climate change can also affect air quality by increasing ground-level ozone. Agriculture depends on stable climate conditions; therefore, unprecedented droughts, floods, heatwaves, etc., can result in food insecurity. Furthermore, climate change can influence health-determining factors and gravely endanger human health.
Renewable energy is one of the most talked-about climate solutions. It involves harnessing energy from sources other than fossil fuels, such as wind, solar, biomass, hydro, tidal energy, etc.
Embracing the various types of renewable energy has many benefits for climate adaptation. Although it starts out pricey, it can lower long-term energy costs, which is particularly great for low-income communities.
Also, extreme weather events can destabilize the energy supply grid. Most renewable energy options are off-grid and would keep essential services going.
We cannot adapt to climate change without changing how we use land. Land acquisition so far has been based solely on enriching a few pockets. That results in over-exploitation of natural resources, and many people, especially marginalized communities and indigenous people, get victimized in the process.
As climate change begins to impact the availability of natural resources and the viability of land, conflicts may arise. Strong institutions and robust policies are needed to reduce the risk of conflicts.
We need land for conservation, relocating people, shelters, and other purposes. We must also learn how to share the land more harmoniously with nature and other people.
Food security is the state of having reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food. The availability of food for people of any class and state, gender or religion is another element of food security. Similarly, household food security is considered to exist when all the members of a family, at all times, have access to enough food for an active, healthy life.[1] Individuals who are food-secure do not live in hunger or fear of starvation.[2] Food security includes resilience to future disruptions of food supply. Such a disruption could occur due to various risk factors such as droughts and floods, shipping disruptions, fuel shortages, economic instability, and wars.[3] Food insecurity is the opposite of food security: a state where there is only limited or uncertain availability of suitable food.
When thinking of the term migration, the mind envisions seasonal bird journeys or perhaps historical human movement around the globe. However, scientists at the USDA Forest Service Northern Research Station are studying another type of migration—the movement of trees and how that relates to climate change.
Global warming results from excess heat-trapping greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the earth's atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is the most abundant GHG and, therefore, is considered the primary driver of rising atmospheric temperatures. GHG emissions are also called carbon emissions.
The daily level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere exceeded 400 parts per million for the first time in human history in 20136. Despite valiant efforts made so far, the amount of daily carbon dioxide is hovering over 420 ppm.
The changing climate has far-reaching consequences for human society. Unfortunately, the consequences are not fairly distributed. Although developed countries are the major contributors to climate change, the effects are felt more in developing countries.
Climate change impacts our environment, economy, physical well-being, and the fabric of society. The rise in sea level increases flooding incidents in coastal communities. Extreme weather events like hurricanes, forest fires, floods, heat waves, and tropical storms are lasting longer and happening more frequently.
Climate change can also affect air quality by increasing ground-level ozone. Agriculture depends on stable climate conditions; therefore, unprecedented droughts, floods, heatwaves, etc., can result in food insecurity. Furthermore, climate change can influence health-determining factors and gravely endanger human health.
Inland and coastal wetlands can remove carbon and other greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and transfer them into the wetlands’ soil as organic soil matter. Wetland producers remove carbon dioxide through photosynthesis2. Then, they convert it into cellulose and other carbon compounds before it becomes soil organic matter.
Forests mitigate climate change, capturing tons of carbon emissions in tree growth. Many climate researchers have advised that we need more trees to reduce greenhouse gases significantly2.
There are different schools of thought on whether tree planting can reverse global warming. Some think it is just what we need to stop climate change once and for all, but others are not so optimistic. Before examining all the different opinions on the climate-saving power of trees, let’s see how carbon sequestration works.
The process of photosynthesis through which plants increase their biomass requires carbon dioxide, amongst other things. CO2 is responsible for 33% to 60% of plant growth. So for plants to survive, they need carbon dioxide, and there is an excess amount in the atmosphere already. So forests absorb and store carbon, and they also help our lands store it as well. In tropical forests, 50% of CO2 is stored in plant biomass, and the other half is in the soil.
Trees all over the world help to maintain the CO2 balance of the planet. Not only do forests absorb CO2, but they also release it too. When we burn trees, cut them down, or they die and decay, the carbon escapes into the atmosphere.
Over the past four decades, forests have sequestered one-quarter of the CO2 emissions caused by humans. Scientists believe that they can do an even better job. The forests in the EU have an estimated 9.8 billion tons of carbon stored in their biomass. This means that the yearly carbon emissions of the EU are only about one-seventh of the amount already stored in the forests. Therefore, the forests in the EU are seen as a viable method of reducing global warming.
Scientific evidence shows that forests, both old-growth and managed, sequester up to 6 tons of carbon per hectare. Research theorizes that replanting trees on 2 billion hectares of degraded land can wipe out the yearly increase of atmospheric CO2.
Using trees to reduce global warming is not as straightforward as it may sound. This is because forests could also become carbon sources. Fires, pest outbreaks, and storms cause a massive return of carbon to the atmosphere.
For instance, Canada's managed forests have done a great job as carbon sinks until recently. In the past decades, however, the forests were carbon sources at some points. This happened because of tree insect outbreaks, forest fires, and land use.
Another study advises that the tropics are the best place to plant trees2. Trees grow faster in these areas and therefore absorb CO2 faster. The study suggests that planting trees in snowy areas could become problematic. This is because the trees can create a warming effect, which is the issue we are trying to avoid in the first place.
In temperate climates like much of Europe and some parts of the US, planting trees may have no significant effect on global warming. The study concludes that planting trees to solve global warming is not the worldwide solution presented by enthusiasts.
Professor Beverly Law of Oregon state university disagrees with the idea that more trees will do damage to the icy regions of the planet. In her opinion, the polar regions are warming at a much faster rate than the rest of the earth.
It is not correct to assume that the snow cover will remain intact without trees despite the earth’s rising temperature. It is most likely that the snow will melt in the coming decades anyway. In that situation, trees will not create an albedo effect.
Then again, Nadine Unger, a professor at the University of Exeter, UK, warns against tree planting. She states trees could form the greenhouse gas methane or ozone through a chemical reaction as the chief reason.
In her 2014 study, she calculates that deforestation from 1850 to the 2000s has created a cooling effect that slightly offsets the warming of greenhouse gas emissions. Her article “to save the planet, don't plant trees” was published in the New York Times. However, Professor Dominick Spracklen, who has studied the effects of aerosols, says such reactions are insignificant. And have a very minute impact on the climate of the earth.
Warming temperatures could also cause increased heterot
Individuals, organizations, and governments are throwing their weight behind tree planting. There are efforts to protect existing forests and plant new ones.
The Paris Agreement has a significant number of nations coming together to combat climate change. Although President Donald Trump announced intentions to pull out of the agreement, he endorsed the 1 trillion trees program at the 2020 world economic forum.
The 1 trillion trees program is a multi-stakeholder effort by the world economic forum and its partners to grow, restore, and conserve 1 trillion trees. The United States representative, Bruce Westerman, also pushed the 1 trillion trees act. Although it garnered a lot of criticism, the president supports the 1 trillion trees act.
Nations under the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe have seen an increase in how much CO2 trees have taken up. This is because the policies and laws concerning forests in the area ensure that new trees are planted to replace the ones cut down. The total forest cover of this region amounts to 1.9 billion hectares.
Research led by professor Tom Crowther found that there are 1.7 billion hectares of land that could support new trees. This area is 11% of all land and equal to the size of the United States and China put together. The researchers did not include urban areas or crop fields in their analysis. They estimate that this worldwide tree-planting scheme could remove 205 gigatons of human-caused carbon emissions in 50-100 years.
In professor Crowther's words
“... it is overwhelmingly more powerful than all of the other climate change solutions proposed”.
The researchers make it clear in an erratum later published that the statement in the earlier sentence does not mean to put planting trees above the reduction of fossil fuel emissions. The study gives a clear blueprint of how much more trees we can plant without disrupting agriculture4. Although these proposed new forests will cover areas worldwide, over 50% of the forest restoration land area are in the United States, Brazil, Canada, China, Russia, and Australia.
The Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Management tried to examine if more trees are all that we need to stop global warming. They created two simulations; in the first, two situations are considered. The first is constant deforestation, no large-scale reforestation, and the Amazon sink becoming a carbon source. This situation showed atmospheric concentration exceeding 500ppm in 2050. In the second situation, they reduce deforestation and add extensive reforestation, but atmospheric concentration also exceeded 500 ppm in 2060.
In the second simulation, they considered again the same situations but with a vast reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from the energy sector. In the first weak forestry situation, atmospheric concentration peaked in 2070. In the strong forest situation, however, critical atmospheric concentration was never reached. Rather it began to reduce in 2050.
This led the ECCM to conclude that tree planting alone can not solve global warming. It needs to be combined with a reduction in fossil fuel emissions. As Greta Thunberg says
“planting trees is very good, of course, but it is nowhere near enough”.
In addition to protecting the planet, increased forestry can be beneficial to people. Planting fruit and rubber trees can provide income for them. Also, in countries with large wood industries like Nigeria, Ghana, and Cameroon, a reforestation campaign could reduce pressure on their natural forests. An abundance of trees is equal to an abundance of wood that we could use to replace fossil fuels in some processes.
Moose live in boreal forests, temperate broadleaf, and mixed forests across North America, Europe, and Asia. These regions have dense stands of coniferous trees and water bodies, like rivers and lakes. These habitats provide moose with abundant vegetation and diverse food sources.
In the Northeastern United States, you can spot them in the sprawling wilds of Alaska and Canada. Similarly, moose habitats stretch across the Atlantic, from Scandinavian countries to Russia, and even reach the remote areas of northeastern China.
One of the critical factors of moose habitat preference is their close association with water sources. These magnificent animals rely on the plants found in lakes, rivers, and swamps.
