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To Plant A Tree

Writer's picture: aimgralnickaimgralnick

“The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.”

Nelson Henderson, 2nd generation Swan Valley Canada farmer.

I dearly want to write about politics, but if the world goes to hell politics won’t matter much, will it? So, more about climate change.

One of the first science facts taught to children is about trees. Maybe it’s because they do magical things, things that keep us alive. The leaves on trees, in case you’ve forgotten, suck up carbon dioxide, which kills us, from the air, and turns it into oxygen, which sustains us. It’s a neat trick called photosynthesis. One of the things I fear children are not being taught is how many trees it is necessary to sustain the world. Another is how many are left. In my commitment to make climate change a constant reminder to my readers, I’m going to look into these magicians and their current state of being.

In a recent piece on trees and sustaining the earth, Time magazine writer Daniel Lewis asked and answered this: “When is a tree not a tree? We often think of urban trees as simply poles in the ground, islands unto themselves, but they are ecosystems all their own, swarming with vitality. Each sustains life, often in tiny forms: fungi, insects, and other small entities. However, trees’ abilities radiate out from there, and they are, in fact, protectors—and ones that are changing as our climate is changing.”

“Trees are many things in our climate-fragile world: shields, indicators, educators, and managers. Their work is largely unnoticed, so it helps to understand their quiet ways and their climate services if we are to help increase their numbers and their effectiveness.

Trees do other magical stuff. They store carbon. They filter stormwater and pollutants, they keep soil in place, and they conserve electricity by cooling homes (just before writing this I made my daily 1 pm pilgrimage to my sliding glass door to lower the shade that blocks the western sun that is directly aimed it. The AC stopped running almost immediately.). And, of course, when healthy trees look great and make the earth’s landscape and that of your home things of beauty. You can check out all of this stuff in many a source. One is the Arbor Day Foundation.

Some say that reforestation and afforestation are some of the most effective ways to combat climate change and restore biodiversity. Broadleaved trees like oak, beech, and maple are especially good because their larger leaves generate more photosynthesis. Conifers can also be helpful because they absorb more heat. Ancient and long-established woodlands can store more carbon per hectare (a hectare is roughly 2.5 times larger than an acre). than other types of woods. Mentioned several times in this piece, The Woodland Trust is the UK’s largest woodland-based charity and offers up much of this information.

While there are interesting things going on in reforestation globally, I am going to focus here on a particular aspect of deforestation, the forest fire.

The latest data on forest fires confirms what we’ve long feared: Forest fires are becoming more widespread, burning nearly twice as much tree cover today as they did 20 years ago.

Using data from a recent study by researchers at the University of Maryland, it is calculated that forest fires now result in 3 million more hectares of tree cover loss per year compared to 2001 — an area roughly the size of Belgium (that would be almost 12 million acres!— and accounted for more than one-quarter of all tree cover loss over the past 20 years. (ed note: fun fact. Belgium is the 22 largest country in the world, 6th in Europe, and for reasons I can not explain is often used by researchers as the diagnostic ruler for measuring things within given countries)

Global Forest Watch says that 2021 was one of the worst years for forest fires since the turn of the century, causing an alarming 9.3 million hectares of tree cover loss globally — over one-third of all tree cover loss that occurred that year. Though down from the previous year, over 6.6 million hectares of tree cover were lost to forest fires in 2022, similar to other years over the past decade. And in 2023, the world has already seen heightened fire activity, including record-breaking burns across Canada and catastrophic fires in Hawaii. Some of it from malicious stupidity like the guy in California, now held without bail, who pushed a burning car into a ravine and started so far “the fire of the year.” (color emphasis is theirs)

And now to the point: climate change is making fires worse. Climate change is one of the major drivers of increasing fire activity. Extreme heat waves are already 5 times more likely today than they were 150 years ago and are expected to become even more frequent as the planet continues to warm. Hotter temperatures dry out the landscape and help create the perfect environment for larger, more frequent forest fires. This in turn leads to higher emissions from forest fires, further exacerbating climate change and contributing to more fires as part of a “fire-climate feedback loop.”

This feedback loop, combined with the expansion of human activities into forested areas, is driving much of the increase in fire activity we see today. The World Resources Institute describes it this way: “Increased carbon emissions drive up the temperature,

that dries out forests making them more susceptible to fire,

thus when a fire occurs it becomes larger, burns faster, and burns longer as the seasons lengthen,

as the areas burn the stored carbon is released into the atmosphere…”

and there you have it,

the loop.

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Bill is not trying to make you loopy, but he is trying to be an educator. If you need a break, check out his other offerings at http://williamgralnickauthor and laugh along with his memoir trilogy available through the above link. Remember his mantra: Read—it’s good for both of us!

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