FUTURE GENERATION

When a forest is present, the soil beneath it has a sponge-like quality. It can absorb water, and hold it, and all the organic matter in the soil, along with roots and fungal mycelia, makes it literally springy- like a sponge. When the trees are removed, the creation of leaf litter, roots and fungal hyphae, stops- and whatever is left of that organic matter, in the soil, begins to decay and disappear- and the sponginess is lost. The roots of the trees hold the soil firmly keeping it intact during heavy rains and typhoons soil is washed away to lower regions. This increases the risk for landslides which can cause seriously threaten the safety of the people and damage their properties.

Restoring tropical forests is the best way to offset your carbon dioxide emissions while rebuilding habitats for endangered species. This is because tropical forests soak up about 26 tons of CO2 per hectare per year as they grow back. Even better – they do so for 20 years — and usually considerably longer. Carbon absorption per tree. When trees grow, they convert CO2 to carbohydrates (sugar). They do this by photosynthesis, and this proces forms building blocks of the tree. The oxygen that is produced is actually a side effect of this carbon sequestering. While the tree grows it keeps converting CO2 in order to grow tall and strong. A young tree is still small and converts less, but as the tree grows bigger it also absorbs more Co2. A young tree absorbs about 5900 gram CO2 per year, while a 10 year old tree absorbs almost 22.000 gram per year. By taking these numbers we can calculate the average CO2 that is absorbed by a tree during his lifetime. To make this more tangible we convert the absorption per tree, to the CO2 capture per acre. When you run the number, it turns out that one acre of forest absorbs about 2.5 tons of CO2 per year.

Urban forests help to improve our air quality. Heat from the earth is trapped in the atmosphere due to high levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other heat-trapping gases that prohibit it from releasing the heat into space. This creates a phenomenon known today as the “greenhouse effect.” Therefore, trees help by removing (sequestering) CO2 from the atmosphere during photosynthesis to form carbohydrates that are used in plant structure/function and return oxygen back into the atmosphere as a byproduct. Roughly half of the greenhouse effect is caused by CO2. Therefore, trees act as carbon sinks, alleviating the greenhouse effect. On average, one acre of new forest can sequester about 2.5 tons of carbon annually. Young trees absorb CO2 at a rate of 13 pounds per tree each year. Trees reach their most productive stage of carbon storage at about 10 years at which point they are estimated to absorb 48 pounds of CO2 per year. At that rate, they release enough oxygen back into the atmosphere to support two human beings. Planting 100 million trees could reduce an estimated 18 million tons of carbon per year and consequently save American consumers $4 billion each year on utility bills. Trees also reduce the greenhouse effect by shading houses and office buildings. This reduces the need for air conditioning by up to 30 percent which in turn reduces the amount of fossil fuels burned to produce electricity. The combination of CO2 removal from the atmosphere, carbon storage in wood and the cooling effect makes trees extremely efficient tools in fighting the greenhouse effect. Planting trees remains one of the most cost-effective means of drawing excess CO2 from the atmosphere. If every American family planted one tree, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere would be reduced by one billion pounds annually. This equates to almost 5 percent of the amount that human activity pumps into the atmosphere each year.