Will forests help climate change?

The simple answer is yes, but not as a single source of rescue. But how?

We are talking about forests here, not just a large group of trees. While I love trees, forests are more complex, including the fungi, algae, insects (probably the two most important), other plants, bacteria, and animals. But it is ultimately the trees that we need: no tress, no forest. You need trees to serve as an anchor for the forest to develop. And if no forest the rest does not occur. More about this subject later.

How do forests have an effect on the climate?

In multiple ways (details below) – 1) they create their own weather, 2) clean/filter the water supply, 3) exchange carbon dioxide for oxygen in the air, and 4) decrease soil erosion.

Create their own weather

This is Amazing but true. If large enough in size: forests create their own weather, and subsequently effect the weather of the land mass they are on. We are not talking about the trees on your suburban neighborhood and city park (which are great), but large forests. Trees emit “aerosols”. These are chemicals/molecules used by the tree themselves, sent out for a wide variety of reasons, not all understood. They may be defensive (against insect or bacterial/fungal attack) or they may communication, may be reproductive (e.g. pollen), or for other reasons not yet understood. Most of these aerosols stay in the area around the forest level and eventually fall to the ground. But a portion get picked up by wind and normal air currents (like dust particles) and are brought up in the atmosphere, where they eventually become “seeds” for cloud formation. Ultimately creating their own rain patterns. A simple example of aerosols is to think of a pine forest, the terpenes from pines are fairly fragrant and very easy for humans to “smell”. You can’t see them but you know the air around you is full of them. Ultimately all forest do this. This takes a large forest area, again not your city park kind of grouping.  This something forests do. Grasslands or fields of crop lands do not. SO cutting sections of forest for farming or grazing or housing (even with lawns and tress) loses this action on weather.

Also (while controversial) this action on cloud formation and rain patterns, has an action of WIND formation – forest make their own wind! Simply put as the water vapor condenses into liquid water (rain and cloud formation) the air gets less dense (liquid water takes up less space that water vapor) this creates a “low pressure area” in the atmosphere. And air from high pressure areas flows to areas of low pressure – WIND!

All of this takes larger areas of forest. We as a planet will have to begin to think about larger areas dedicated to forests on each continent to sustain these continents. (more on this later)

Carbon dioxide and Oxygen

Forests don’t clean the air as a “Filter”. Simply put forests need carbon to grow and they get the carbon from the carbon dioxide in the air. When they are done making their sugars from sunlight, air and water (trees make their own food – AMAZING IN ITSELF), they take the carbon from the CO2 (carbon dioxide in the air), combine it with the hydrogens from water (H2O) to make the carbohydrates (sugars) and have some oxygen left over. SO they release the oxygen which they didn’t use and don’t want back into the air. While it is not “breathing” the way we think of animals breathing, the trees take in CO2, steal the carbon, and ultimately release back the O2. Every thing you think about a tree, the leaves, the giant trunks, the massive roots underground, ultimately comes from the stolen carbon atoms from the air. You can think of forests as CO2 vacuums, sucking CO2 out of the air. But trees grow very slowly! In a forest it may take 100 years for a tree to get to mature. SO this process needs large areas – big forests. All tress suck carbon out of the air (even landscape trees in suburbia), but to effect the levels of CO2 on the scale of the planet, we need very large areas with forests. Clearly just planting more forests alone will not be enough to change the climate, but they can be a very large part of the solution

Clean Water

The forest floor is complex and rich and in very simple terms acts as a massive filter. The forest floor and below is full of tubule networks of fungi (mushrooms), algae, many feet thick of alive and decaying matter (leaves, decaying old trees and plants, dead insects, old fungi, etc.), incredible bacterial colonies, massive plant root networks (that work with and connect to the fungi tubule networks) – to mention just the main groups. Part of this “cleaning” is simply acting as a giant filter. But additionally, the live portions of the forest floor take up and “eat” many of the chemicals/substances coming through. Bacteria and algae by the billions are active and very diverse, often taking in what we might consider strange, even toxic chemicals and using them or in some cases simply cleaving parts of the molecule to change it. The bacterial and algae colonies (virtually everywhere) in the forest floor are important parts of the “filter”, often detoxifying or trapping what is flowing through the soil with the water. Ultimately what flows out of the forest either into streams or the area water table is cleaner. Nothing else does this like forests. Agriculture (big farms) usually make it worse, due to spilling of fertilizer excess into streams (this causes algae blooms – more about this another time). Grasslands, while better than farms, do not have the deep biomass floor or diversity (fungi, bacteria and algae) of forests.  Clean water is becoming increasingly scarce. Something we have always taken for granted. Forests can again be part of the solution for underground water tables with clean water and for clean water in streams (that lead to rivers where we get much of out water).

Soil Conservation

soil in forests is some of the richest soil for the above reasons (see clean water). In fact forests are sometimes cleared for the soil below them. The soil is held in place by a complex network of roots and fungi tubule networks and continually restored by the living biomass (plants, algae, fungi, insects, etc) above it. Without forests the soil will be blown or drained away, leaving a more barren shallow soil – rock, clay or sand. Soil that will not hold water or clean water. Creating a dryer more desert like environment. More deserts.

This was a very quick summary. Each subject could be a book. But in the end, you don’t have to be a “tree hugger” or love nature or want a place to hike and see the birds or animals (e.g. deer) to understand we need forests. This is more about keeping the planet a place we can live rather than making parks. We could put them anywhere. We don’t need special scenery for state parks and hiking trails. We could use left over areas that aren’t used (Think about Chernobyl in Ukraine after the nuclear plant accident!!. It is now a huge forest. OK I agree it was unintended to use the land that way, but we can use other lands like that as well.)

Write back

haspiller5@gmail.com