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What Kind Of Forests Are Beneficial To The Environment?

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Most people imagine forests as a massive network of tall trees, wildlife and fauna all around, and sunshine peeking through between leaves. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations definition of a forest is an area larger than 1.25 acres, consisting of trees 16 ft or taller, with over 10% canopy coverage.

This list of attributes is simple and straightforward, so that it’s easier to classify land. However, it gives little insight into what a forest should and can look like. Recent research suggests that not all forests created are beneficial to the environment.

Most forests are crucial because they’re filled with fungi, vegetation, and microorganisms that draw carbon dioxide from the air and store it. Healthy forests can provide a way to help offset greenhouse gas emissions, but just how much CO2 they can absorb may be overestimated.

The amount of forest across the world is estimated to have declined by 3% between 1990 and 2015. In 2011, the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Germany launched the Bonn Challenge. The Bonn Challenge’s goal was to restore over 500 thousand sq miles of degraded and deforested land around the world by 2020 and double that by 2030.

What Kind Of Forests Are Beneficial To The Environment?

However, in a paper published in Nature by Charlotte Wheeler and Simon Lewis, nearly half of the area committed under the Bonn Challenge is plantations that nurture single tree types such as food crops. The researchers claim that such plantations do not meet the initiative’s environmental goals.

They wrote:

Although these can support local economies, plantations are much poorer at storing carbon than are natural forests, which develop with little or no disturbance from humans. The regular harvesting and clearing of plantations release stored CO2 back into the atmosphere every 10 to 20 years. By contrast, natural forests continue to sequester carbon for many decades.

According to Wheeler and Lewis, natural and mature forests are 40 times better than plantations at storing carbon dioxide and six times better than agroforestry. Agroforestry is where useful trees and crops are grown together.

A study found that some tree planting attempts can have contrary consequences. The study looked into four developing countries that switched from deforestation to reforestation between 1961 and 2007 and found that they were importing more wood from abroad, leading to forest loss elsewhere.

Marie Noëlle Keijzer, CEO of WeForest, a Belgium-based not-profit said:

Number one priority is to protect what we have. The number two priority is to restore; the trees take ten years to become significant and then 30 years to really have absorbed all the carbon they can absorb, so you don’t want to compare a new tree with an existing tree or an existing forest with all the biodiversity and everything there.

Experts suggest to target reforestation efforts to particular areas of the world. For example, trees grown on the equator take up carbon more quickly. Keijzer believes that planting trees alone is not enough and that forests should be designed to benefit people too. Some ways to make forests that benefit residents include building woodlots for local use or creating nature reserves with tourism jobs. As a result of a sustainable economy, people are less likely to cut down all the trees.

The post What Kind Of Forests Are Beneficial To The Environment? appeared first on Intelligent Living.


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