ith arbor day coming up this spring,€¦ · irreplaceable tropical primary forests have been cut...

From the — Winter, 2020Email: [email protected]

W ith Arbor Day coming up this spring, you may want to consider planting

a few more trees than usual. The planet needs them!

A new study1 finds that the forests in the heart of Africa and across the Amazon will stop absorbing carbon dioxide emissions as a whole in as little as 15 years, forcing scien-tists and politicians to rethink their strategies on combating the global climate crisis.

Tropical Forests Reaching CO2 Saturation

The study (Asynchronous carbon sink saturation in African and Amazonian tropical forest) published this month in Nature, describes how CO2 absorption in the tropical forest has already plunged.

Tropical forests are taking up less carbon dioxide from the air, reducing their abil-ity to act as “carbon sinks” and possibly accelerating climate breakdown. The Am-azon could turn into a source of carbon in the atmosphere, instead of one of the

biggest absorbers of the gas, possibly as soon as the next decade, because of the damage caused by fires, loggers and farming interests in Brazil, and the impacts of our warming climate.

If that happens, climate breakdown is likely to become even more severe in its effects, and the world will have to quickly reduce carbon-producing activities to counteract the loss of the carbon sinks. “We’ve found that one of the most worrying impacts of climate change has already begun,” said Simon Lewis, professor in the school of geog-raphy at Leeds University, one of the senior authors of the

study. “This is decades ahead of even the most pessimistic climate models.”

Global Deforestation

According to another study, an area of forest the size of the United King-dom is being lost every year around the world – the vast majority of it from tropical rainforests – with dire effects on the climate emergency and wildlife.2

The rate of loss has reached 26 million

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KeepPlantingTreesBy John Rainey

— Chinese Proverb

The best time to plant a tree

was 20 years ago. The second-best

time is now.

❝

hectares a year, a report has found, having grown rapidly in the past five years despite pledges made by governments around the world in 2014 to reverse deforestation and restore trees.

Charlotte Streck, a co-founder and the director of Climate Focus, the think tank behind the report, said: “We need to keep our trees and we need to restore our forests. Deforestation has accelerated, despite the pledges that have been made.”

The New York declaration on forests was signed at the UN in 2014, requiring countries to cut in half the amount of deforestation and restore 150m hectares of deforested or degraded forest land by 2020. But, instead of going down, the rate of tree cover loss has gone up by 43% since the declaration was adopted, while the most valuable and irreplaceable tropical primary forests have been cut down at a rate of 4.3m hectares a year.

The ultimate goal of the declaration, to halt deforestation by 2030 – potentially saving as much carbon as taking all the world’s cars off the roads – now looks further away than ever.

Some climate scientists use another method of measuring tree cover that leads them to believe that the planet now has more trees than it did 35 years ago. In a study reported in Pacific Standard magazine, the authors contend that tree cover loss in the tropics was outweighed by tree cover gain

in subtropical, temperate, boreal, and polar regions.3

“Despite ongoing deforestation, fires, drought-induced die-offs, and insect outbreaks, the world’s tree cover actually increased by 2.24 million square kilometers—an area the size of Texas and Alaska combined—over the past 35 years,” finds a paper published in the journal Nature. But the research also confirms large-scale loss of the planet’s most biodiverse ecosystems, especially tropical forests.

Are There More Trees Than 35 Years Ago?

As reported in an article in Pacific Standard magazine, “the study, led by Xiao-Peng Song and Matthew Hansen of the University of Maryland, is based on analysis of satellite data from 1982 to 2016. The researchers broke land cover into three categories: tall vegetation consisting of trees of at least 16 feet in height; short vegetation under 16 feet in height including shrubs, grass, and agricultural crops; and “bare ground,” including urban areas, sand, tundra, and rock. While the classification may seem simplistic, powerful conclusions can be drawn from the data, including assessing agricultural expansion, climate-driven expansion and contraction of ecosystems, and forest clearing and recovery.”

“The results of this study reflect a human-dominated Earth system,” the researchers write. “Direct human action on landscapes is found over large areas on every continent, from intensification and extensification of agriculture to

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increases in forestry and urban land uses, with implications for the maintenance of ecosystem services.”

Overall, the study found that tree cover loss in the tropics was outweighed by tree cover gain in subtropical, temperate, boreal, and polar regions. Tree cover gain is being driven by agricultural abandonment in parts of Europe, Asia, and North America; warming temperatures that are enabling forests to move toward the poles; and China’s massive tree planting program. Tree cover is also increasing globally in montane ecosystems.

The biggest gains in tree cover occurred in temperate continental forest, boreal coniferous forest, subtropical humid forest. Russia, China, and the United States experienced the largest increase in tree cover among countries during the period of study.

The study estimates “gross tree canopy loss globally at 1.33 million square kilometers, or 4.2 percent of 1982 tree cover. But adding in gains, the planet’s total area of tree cover increased by 2.24 million square kilometers, or 7.1 percent, from 31 million to 33 million square kilometers”. The authors note these numbers “contradict” data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which collects national forest data and has historically been seen as the most consistent source of information on forest cover: “A global net gain in tree canopy contradicts current understanding of long-term forest area change; the FAO reported a net forest loss between 1990 and 2015. However, our gross tree canopy loss estimate … agrees in magnitude with the FAO’s estimate of net forest area change, despite differences in the time period covered and definition of forest.”

Even as this study contends that the Earth may presently have more trees than 35 years ago, it also confirms that “some of its most productive and biodiverse biomes – especially tropical forests and savannas – are significantly more damaged and degraded, reducing their resilience and capacity to afford ecosystem services.”

Time is Running Out

Dozens of international organizations and climate scientists have sounded alarms like the following: “Each year for the last decade, the UN Environment Programme’s (UNEP) Emissions Gap Report has compared where greenhouse gas emissions are headed, against where they should be to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. Each year, the report has found that the world is not doing enough. Emissions have only risen, hitting a new high of 55.3 gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent in 2018. The UNEP Emissions Gap Report 2019 finds that even if all unconditional Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement are implemented, we are still on course for a 3.2°C temperature rise.”7

A Warming Climate Is Stressing Our Trees.

A quiet crisis is playing out in many U.S. forests as a growing number of trees are at risk of succumbing to drought, disease, insects and wildfire – much of it driven by climate change.

Forestry officials and scientists are increasingly alarmed and say the essential role of trees – providing clean water, locking up carbon and sheltering whole ecosystems – is being undermined on a grand scale.


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California and mountain states have suffered particularly big die-offs in recent years, with over 66 million trees killed in the Sierra Nevada alone since 2010, according to the Forestry Service.

In northern California, an invasive pathogen called Sudden Oak Death is infecting hundreds of different plants, from redwoods and ferns to backyard oaks and bay laurels. The disease is related to the blight that caused the Irish potato famine. “We’re talking millions of trees killed, whole mountain sides dying,” said Dr David Rizzo, of the University of California, Davis.

Nearly a decade of drought in the west has not only starved trees of water but weakened their defenses and created conditions for “insect eruptions” across the U.S., says Diana Six, an entomologist at the University of Montana. “Bark beetles and mountain pine beetles, usually held in check by wet winters, now have more time to breed and roam. The latter have already expanded their range from British Columbia across the Rockies, to the Yukon border and eastward, into jack pine forests that have never seen the bug. The outbreak is something like 10 times bigger than normal, I would argue a lot more than that,” Six said.

The City of Boulder, Colorado is estimated to lose more than 70,000 ash trees to emerald ash borer (EAB) alone over the next 10 years. EAB, an invasive insect from Asia, is attacking our ash trees and will destroy more than 25 percent of the city’s current urban tree canopy by 2030. EAB is considered a slow-moving natural disaster. It has already destroyed hundreds of millions of ash trees in more than 30 states across the U.S.5

Other threats to our trees.

In addition to trees naturally declining due to old age, our trees are increasingly under threat from extreme weather events such as drought, dramatic temperature fluctuations, heavy snows and high winds. In November 2014, a 48-hour, 70-degree temperature drop caused the death of over 500 of Boulder’s mature trees. Many trees today are still showing varying states of decline and stress as a result of the 2014 freeze.

As climate destabilization and movement of invasive

organisms continue, many urban trees face additional stress and insect and disease threats, such as drippy blight of red oaks, thousand cankers disease of walnut, pine wilt nematode of pine trees, Douglas-fir tussock moth, and mountain pine beetle.

In many communities across the U.S., land development and redevelopment also threatens the urban canopy, especially when sites include high-quality mature trees. As vacant lots are developed, existing homes rebuilt and streets and floodways widened, mature trees are often removed, or their health impacted by construction.

The time to act is now.

As parks and recreation professionals, there are lots of things we can do to help mitigate these problems. This includes making our parks more climate resilient. CLIMATE RESILIENT PARKS is an initiative of the National Recreation and Parks Association (NRPA). “Parks are key community stakeholders when it comes to addressing the effects of climate change. From protecting water resources via green infrastructure practices, to reducing urban heat island effect through city wide forest restoration - parks play a


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critical role in ensuring that our communities successfully adapt and thrive in light of a rapidly changing planet.”4

Research shows a trillion trees could be planted to capture huge amount of carbon dioxide

Planting billions of trees across the world is one of the biggest and cheapest ways of taking CO2 out of the atmosphere to tackle the climate crisis, according to scientists, who have made the first calculation of how many more trees could be planted without encroaching on crop land or urban areas. 8

As trees grow, they absorb and store the carbon dioxide emissions that are driving global heating. New research is suggesting that a worldwide planting program could result in the removal of two-thirds of all the emissions from human activities that remain in the atmosphere today, a figure the scientists describe as “mind-blowing”.

The analysis found there are 1.7 billion hectares of treeless land on which 1.2 trillion native tree saplings would naturally grow. That area is about 11% of all land and equivalent to the size of the US and China combined. Tropical areas could have 100% tree cover, while others would be more sparsely covered, meaning that on average about half the area would be under tree canopy.

The scientists specifically excluded all fields used to grow crops and urban areas from their analysis. But they did include grazing land, on which the researchers say a few trees can also benefit sheep and cattle.

“This new quantitative evaluation shows [forest] restoration isn’t just one of our climate change solutions, it is overwhelmingly the top one,” said Prof Tom Crowther at the Swiss university ETH Zürich, who led the research. “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.”

Crowther emphasized that it remains vital to reverse the current trends of rising greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning and forest destruction and bring them down to zero. He said this is needed to stop the climate crisis becoming even worse and because the forest restoration envisaged would take 50-100 years to have its full effect of removing 200 billon tons of carbon.

And tree planting is “a climate change solution that doesn’t require President Trump to immediately start believing in climate change, or scientists to come up with technological solutions to draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere”,

Crowther said. “It is available now, it is the cheapest one possible and every one of us can get involved.”

Plant a Million – a Billion – a Trillion Trees.

Since 2006, The Million Tree Initiative refers to ongoing environmental projects that multiple cities have individually committed to, aimed at increasing the urban forest through the planting of one million trees. Cities that are known to be currently involved

in this initiative are: Los Angeles, Denver, New York City, Shanghai, London, Ontario, and Amherst, New York. A common motive shared between these participating cities is, according to their mission statements, the reduction of carbon dioxide in the air to reduce the effects of global warming. 9

The Nature Conservancy’s Plant a Billion Trees campaign is a major forest restoration effort with a goal of planting a billion trees across the planet. “Trees provide so many benefits to our everyday lives. They filter clean air, provide fresh drinking water, help curb climate change, and create homes for thousands of species of plants and animals. Planting a Billion Trees can help save the Earth from deforestation. It’s a big number, but we know we can do it with your help.”10

The Trillion Tree Campaign is a campaign of Plant-for-the-Planet with the aim to plant a trillion trees. It is a development and continuation of the activities of the


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earlier Billion Tree Campaign. Their vision is “One trillion trees re-grown, saved from loss and better protected around the world by 2050.”11 This idea was embraced this January at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, when they endorse 1t.ORG as an initiative designed to support the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030, led by UNEP and FAO.12According to their website, “1t.ORG exists to connect, empower and mobilize a global reforestation community of millions, unleashing their potential to act at an unprecedented scale and speed, to ensure the conservation and restoration of one trillion trees within this decade.” Even U.S. President, Donald Trump, has pledged support for this initiative.

GreenPlay, LLC, has extensive experience with helping communities with plan conservation and stewardship programs. For more information, contact Teresa Penbrooke, PhD, MAOM, CPRE at [email protected].

References:

1. Asynchronous carbon sink saturation in African and Amazonian tropical forest, Nature, Mar. 4, 2020, 80-87 (2020) Wannes Hubau, Simon L. Lewis, […] Lise Zemagho. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2035-0

2. World losing area of forest the size of the UK each year, report finds. The Guardian, Sept. 12, 2019. Fiona Harvey, Environment Correspondent. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/sep/12/deforestation-world-losing-area-forest-size-of-uk-each-year-report-finds

3. The Planet Now Has More Trees Than It Did 35 Years Ago. Pacific Standard Magazine, Aug. 17, 2018, By Rhett A. Butler. https://psmag.com/environment/the-planet-now-has-more-trees-than-it-did-35-years-ago

4. Park and Recreation Sustainability Practices – A summary of results from an NRPA Member Survey. https://www.nrpa.org/our-work/Three-Pillars/conservation/climate-resilient-parks/

5. City of Boulder, CO Forestry Department. https://bouldercolorado.gov/forestry/tree-crisis-2

6. An American tragedy: why are millions of trees dying across the country? The Guardian, Mon 19 Sep 2016. By Oliver Milman in Oahu and Alan Yuhas in San Francisco.

7. UN Environment Programme, Emissions Gap Report. Nov. 26, 2019. https://www.unenvironment.org/resources/emissions-gap-report-2019

8. Tree planting ‘has mind-blowing potential’ to tackle climate crisis. The Guardian, July 4, 2019; Modified on Dec. 16, 2019. By Damian Carrington, Environment Editor

9. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Million_Tree_Initiative

10. The Nature Conservancy. https://www.nature.org/en-us/get-involved/how-to-help/plant-a-billion/

11. Trillion Trees. http://www.trilliontrees.org/home

12. 1t.ORG. https://www.1t.org

ith arbor day coming up this spring,€¦ · irreplaceable tropical primary forests have been cut...

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