Eco Watch Planting more than 500 billion trees could remove around 25 percent of existing carbon from the atmosphere, a new study has found. What's more: there's enough space to do it.
The study, published in Science Friday, set out to assess how much new forest the earth could support without encroaching on farmland or urban areas and came up with a figure of 0.9 billion hectares, an area roughly the size of the U.S., BBC News reported. That makes reforestation "the most effective solution" for mitigating the climate crisis, the researchers concluded.
The new trees would remove around 200 gigatonnes of carbon, or two thirds of what humans have pumped into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution.
However, the researchers emphasized that tree planting was not a replacement for reducing greenhouse gas emissions or phasing out the use of fossil fuels.
"None of this works without emissions cuts," Crowther told Time.
1 comment:
Restoring grasslands with regenerative grazing is as effective as tree planting and captures carbon quicker then new tree plantings. The grasses in regenerative grazing systems, will grow root systems that go over 15 feet deep. That is a lot of carbon that can be sequestered, and will produce an abundance of nutrient dense carbon negative food. Grassland restoration is a newer science that isn't as widely known, and trees do a great job of capturing carbon, so both are needed, as is lowering emissions.
Post a Comment