according to<\/a>\u00a0the authors.<\/p>\nIn addition to that, Houghton says, trees are relatively cheap carbon consumers. As he put it, \u201cThere are technologies people are working on to take carbon dioxide out of the air. And trees do it \u2014 for nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n
To make this bold prediction, the researchers identified what tree cover looks like in nearly 80,000 half-hectare plots in existing forests. They then used that data to map how much canopy cover would be possible in other regions \u2014 excluding urban or agricultural land \u2014 depending on the area\u2019s topography, climate, precipitation levels, and other environmental variables. The result revealed where trees might grow outside of existing forests.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know a single tree can capture a lot of carbon. What we don\u2019t know is how many trees the planet can support,\u201d says Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Bastin, an ecologist and postdoc at ETH-Z\u00fcrich, a university in Z\u00fcrich, Switzerland, and the study\u2019s lead author, adding, \u201cThis gives us an idea.\u201d<\/p>\n
They found that all that tree-planting potential isn\u2019t spaced evenly across the globe. Six countries, in fact, hold more than half of the world\u2019s area for potential tree restoration (in this order): Russia, the United States, Canada, Australia, Brazil, and China. The United States alone has room for more than 100 million hectares of additional tree cover \u2014 greater than the size of Texas.<\/p>\n
The study, however, has its limitations. For one, a global tree-planting effort is somewhat impractical. As the authors write, \u201cit remains unclear what proportion of this land is public or privately owned, and so we cannot identify how much land is truly available for restoration.\u201d Rob Jackson, who chairs the Earth System Science Department and Global Carbon Project at Stanford University and was not involved with the study, agrees that forest management plays an important role in the fight against climate change, but says the paper\u2019s finding that humans could reduce atmospheric carbon by 25 percent by planting trees seemed \u201cunrealistic,\u201d and wondered what kinds of trees would be most effective or how forest restoration may disrupt agriculture.<\/p>\n
\u201cForests and soils are the cheapest and fastest way to remove carbon from the atmosphere \u2014 lots of really good opportunities there,\u201d he said. \u201cI get uneasy when we start talking about managing\u00a0billions\u00a0<\/em>of extra acres of land, with one goal in mind: to store carbon.\u201d Bastin, though, says the study is \u201cabout respecting the natural ecosystem,\u201d and not simply planting \u201c100 percent tree cover.\u201d He also clarified that planting trees alone cannot fix climate change. The problem is \u201crelated to the way we are living on the planet,\u201d he says.<\/p>\nCaveats aside, Houghton sees the study as a useful exercise in what\u2019s possible. \u201c[The study] is setting the limits,\u201d says Houghton. \u201cIt\u2019s not telling us at all how to implement it. That what our leaders have to think about.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Er dette l\u00f8sningen p\u00e5 klimaproblemet? Ikke vet jeg, men en veldig interessant betraktning \ud83d\udc4d. Stop building a spaceship to Mars and just plant some damn trees. By\u00a0Jackie Flynn Mogensen\u00a0on Jul 5, 2019 \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Get your\u00a0daily dose of good news\u00a0from Grist\u00a0Subscribe To The Beacon This\u00a0story\u00a0was originally published by\u00a0Mother Jones\u00a0and is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politikk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sistesiden.no\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sistesiden.no\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sistesiden.no\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sistesiden.no\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sistesiden.no\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=101"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/sistesiden.no\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":109,"href":"https:\/\/sistesiden.no\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101\/revisions\/109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sistesiden.no\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sistesiden.no\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sistesiden.no\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/grist.files.wordpress.com\/2019\/07\/gettyimages-652372675-e1562348069173.jpg?w=1024&h=576&crop=1\")
<\/div>\n