Climate Change & Wildlife

      Roscommon/Crawford Chapter

Another Way to Fix the Climate Problem

We all know about the carbon cycle and how plants take in carbon dioxide and give off life-giving oxygen used by people and animals. Plants are essential for our world to exist as climate scientists have proven over the last 50 years. Seen in this light, the problem of climate change is that we have too many people on earth demanding energy (from burning fossil fuels) and too few plants taking in enough carbon dioxide. As result, our atmosphere has been gradually filling up with greenhouse gases.

In trying to find solutions to the climate problem, folks have been talking about sequestration of carbon (a fancy term meaning taking in carbon dioxide) by whatever means possible, up to and including large machines powered by electricity to suck in air and capture the carbon/greenhouse gases. Such a large and complicated answer for a simple problem – why not let plants do the job? Climate scientists have now proven that plants, specifically trees, can do the job just fine while providing other important benefits. Here are the details.

For most of human history trees were the predominant, large-size life form on earth. Trees are wonderful at sequestering CO2 from the atmosphere. If forests could be returned to their prior state of dominance on earth, the problem of climate change would be solved.

Unfortunately, we humans have spent much of our time on earth cutting forests and we continue to do so. Our settlement of vast areas has led to the destruction of forest lands as settlers cleared land for agriculture. With humans now inhabiting virtually every region of the planet, we have cut down about half the trees formerly growing on earth and we are continuing to cut more. In 2018, we cut the equivalent of 30 football fields of forest every 3 minutes.

Cutting trees and reducing the size and number of forests (deforestation) has consequences beyond the loss of individual trees. Forests are connected to each other by unseen fungi that live beneath every forest. These fungi exist in vast networks that stretch from forest to forest across thousands of miles, distributing and sharing soil nutrients. This network works to build up the soils that lie beneath the forests, creating a base of soils that insure the health of successive generations of forests. Furthermore, large forests also provoke rainfall as natural currents of moisture circulate from forest to forest. If the network is stretched to its breaking point by removal of forests, soil quality will decline with ‘dead soils’ predominating in formerly productive areas.

Cutting forests for agriculture is a false effort as has been proven by science and experience in America and elsewhere. In the American Midwest during the late 1920’s and early 1930’s, the vast Midwest prairies with their deep-rooted grasses were plowed under for farming. The consequence of this seeming small change was a disruption of natural processes that affected both wind and rain patterns in the area. The result of the consequent drought and windstorms created a dust bowl with swirling topsoil being blown from the Midwest to the East Coast helping to begin The Great Depression. 

In the 1990’s, China experienced the same dust bowl problem, caused by the same reasons. China developed an ongoing program to create a new forest region of 100 million hectares (one hectare equals 2.47 acres). The result has been more stable rainfall, increased soil quality, and improved agriculture production. In similar fashion, the African nation of Ethiopia reduced their forests to a mind-boggling 4% of its original area before they recognized the problems this was creating. Their response has been “a campaign [of] planting 350 million trees at 1,000 sites across the country, most of which were planted in a single day.” (Note that the United States already has an effective program of reforestation and Michigan is one of its bright spots as we regularly manage our forests and plant more trees than those that die or are removed by harvesting; however, we could do more.)

The benefits of planting trees are not limited to rural or agricultural areas. In this era of increasing temperatures due to climate change, we know that trees can cool a city by as much as 50`F, a life or death benefit for cities like those in India that have reached temperatures of 122`F. The report, Forest Resources of the United States, 2017, puts it slightly differently, “trees in the urban setting can reduce energy use for heating and cooling by $5.4 billion annually while producing 67 million tons of oxygen per year and sequestering 37 million tons of carbon.” Trees also filter the air, increase rainfall and biodiversity by providing homes and food for numerous insects and small animals. As those of us who live in the North Woods also understand, people love forests and their trees for the numerous pleasures they provide including their role in wildlife propagation and in creating beauty.

A simple and effective way to solve the problem of climate change is to replant the estimated three trillion trees that mankind has removed from the earth. 

The good news is that we have plenty of land available for this purpose, although some creativity and significant effort will be needed. The most gain from these added trees will be achieved by sustainable forestry. One world-wide study found that the earth has plenty of areas suitable for tree planting with a total available land mass about the size of the United States, easily large enough for the renewed tree planting that we need.

Some creativity and drive will be needed to convert our over-paved urban desolation to areas with parks and small forests integral to the city plan. Since we already have building technologies for creating rooftop gardens and plant friendly atriums, it seems just a matter of will to create cities with less pavement and more wooded trails for walking and bicycling that provide both recreation and cleaner air for those who live there and the population writ large. We need to be vocal to our Land Use planners about the need for more trees so that they will answer to us as well as those in the real estate business who have dominated both urban and rural landscape design plans.

We can begin at home by replacing some portion of our grass lawns with an area dominated by trees, the larger the better. What say you? The Crawford/Roscommon Conservation District and our District Forester Tabitha O’Dell will be happy to suggest what you need.