As the Big Think and ROBBY BERMAN on 11 July, 2019 report that a new study lays out a data-driven plan for planting trees. In other words, a reforestation plan. A plan that would capture 2/3 of atmospheric carbon dioxide.
1. The right trees planted in the right place could have a major impact on climate change.
2. The study identifies .09 billion hectares of available land. All for the necessary new forests.
3. The new forests would capture 205 gigatons of carbon dioxide.
It would be no surprise to anyone to say that if we hadn’t deforested so much of the Earth. So we wouldn’t be in so much trouble with climate change now.
In also exchanging all those trees for hamburgers and industrialization was one of our potentially fatal mistakes. A new study however, looks at the idea of reforestation. All from an unusually strategic, data-driven point of view.
In the study — it was published on July 5 in Science. In it the researchers calculate that if we plant just the right trees in just the right places. Then new forests could take 205 gigatons of CO2 out of the atmosphere. That’s over the next 40–100 years. This would, of course, require a massive planting campaign. I mean we are talking growing trees in .09 billion hectares of land the researchers have identified as available for the purpose. (That’s roughly the size of the U.S.) While some wonder how realistic this plan is, it’s clearly worth considering, especially since, as the study points out, we’re currently on track to lose yet another 223 million hectares by 2050.
Figuring out what nature and reforestation can do for climate change!
Areas currently forested compared to the areas identified. Those as available for reforestation and more growth.
To ascertain the Earth’s “tree-carrying capacity,” the authors of the study drew from 78,774 satellite-photo measurements, largely from protected areas as the best exemplars of how trees would naturally grow. Matching this data across large global databases, they arrived at the conclusion that the Earth has the capacity for 4.4 billion hectares of forests. Subtracting existing forests, land used for crops, and developed areas left them with the .09 billion hectares that could be supporting forests but are not currently doing so. Knocking 205 gigatons out of the estimated 300 gigatons we’ve produced would be a considerable improvement.
The research was done by the Crowther Lab at ETH Zurich. Senior author Tom Crowther says, “We all knew restoring forests could play a part in tackling climate change, but we had no scientific understanding of what impact this could make. If we act now, this could cut carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by up to 25%, to levels last seen almost a century ago.”
Speaking to The Guardian, Crowther shares his own surprise at what the data revealed: “This new quantitative evaluation shows [ forest] restoration isn’t just one of our climate change solutions, it is overwhelmingly the top one. What blows my mind is the scale. I thought restoration would be in the top 10, but it is overwhelmingly more powerful than all of the other climate change solutions proposed.”
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