Why afforestation is importance

See, one of the major reasons to clear forests is agriculture which can no longer be practiced to fulfill the rising food demand. Afforested lands also use up the opportunity of developing residential projects for people to live there. This makes it difficult for carrying out urban development as governments are sometimes forced to halt afforestation projects to make space for homes.

Careful infrastructure planning must be done with urban development experts to find a way of balancing both; urban development and afforestation. Usually afforestation projects are not able to achieve high biodiversity levels like in natural forests.

It is not necessary that afforestation projects will only lead to a sustained increase in biodiversity. Due to poor management, afforestation projects may end up doing the exact opposite decrease biodiversity in the ecosystem. Grasslands now converted into forests may not harbor the same habitats for native species. Improperly managed afforestation can lead to monoculture practices that lack plant diversity and reduce the number of habitats available to species.

This can actually lead to results similar to deforestation. The native species will migrate in search of new habitats and may come in contact with humans who may hunt them, both voluntarily and involuntarily. The species may then end up being endangered and even extinct. Afforestation may become a potential problem if it is built for the purpose of ecotourism. Ecotourism brings various problems and challenges, such as littering and harm to wildlife.

The harm to wildlife is the big no-no organizations should be on the constant lookout for. Any person entering the afforested region should be counseled on how to behave inside the afforestation parks.

Regulations must be passed out by organizations concerned with protection and management of these forests so that the wildlife can be protected and be far away and isolated from the tourists coming to visit these forests. While it is true that afforestation is highly beneficial for the environment, it does carry a few drawbacks which could potentially be disastrous. Therefore, it is essential to look holistically when planning to carry out afforestation and strict management should be observed to ensure a sustainable future for these new forests.

As of now, many landowners in the central hardwood forest region of America are converting marginal land of their farms into forests using Permaculture principles.

These efforts have been implemented to reduce excessive burden on existing hardwood species of native forests including Black cherry, black walnut and northern red oak trees. South Africa has a natural forest cover of 0. Afforestation tree species in South Africa include gum trees, black wattle, pine trees among others. These species have assisted in fulfilling the demand of wood for use in charcoal, mining timber, paper pulp and various other commercial applications.

Fortunately, Afforestation projects in South Africa have been successful enough to export and supply about 2 million wood and wood products worldwide.

China has set aside a budget close to Billion US dollars for afforestation projects planned across the nation. Afforestation is a major solution to tackle the loss of natural forests caused by heavy deforestation over the past few years.

If it is practiced properly at thought out conservation sites, these projects could be extremely viable and could provide for major commercial needs of people from forests. My love for nature is not newfound.

I have lived on the countryside for over a decade of my life where I realized how human activities impacted the environment. Later during my stint in medical school, I realized that many of our health concerns originate from neglecting our environmental responsibilities and this was just not sustainable in the long run.

Raising awareness, not locally but globally, was the mission. This led to the foundation of EnvironmentBuddy! Your email address will not be published. Environment Buddy. P Plants and Trees. What is Afforestation? By planting trees in empty lands, we can help promote the fast propagation of certain types of trees in the wood industry.

Since the demand for building materials and wood fuels is increasing, afforestation helps to meet the demands without cutting down the natural forests. Afforestation makes possible the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Deforestation can lead to the depletion of trees in riverside zones and water catchments. Afforestation is the process that makes sure that the plants and trees which hold the soil in these oversensitive areas are protected. Several countries use afforestation together with agricultural crops in croplands.

This practice is known as agroforestry. It has certain benefits like:. When it comes to the environmental benefits, it is always beneficial to plant trees irrespective of the fact that we do so in barren lands or as a way to regenerate depleted forests. Trees enable checking atmospheric carbon dioxide. Therefore, massive scale afforestation can diminish these problems that appear due to burning fossil fuels.

A big number of landowners in the central hardwood forest region of the US are trying to turn cropland marginally into a forest. This can help decrease the pressure on the use of current hardwood species of the forest like northern red oak, black walnut, black cherry.

However, in South Africa, approximately 0. This helps to provide wood which can be used for poles, paper pulp, mining timber, charcoal and several other applications.

When planting a certain tree species, this brings several advantages. For instance, when planting pine, this helps keep tabs on infections that the tree is prone to in its native climate and country. Hence, it increases production.

South Africa pursues higher yields and better growth due to afforesting these rare species. This country can produce and export about two million tons of wood and wood products. In China, the government has allocated a massive amount, equivalent to about billion US dollars. While this does not sound as promising as formulated in the original paper, we strongly emphasize that this is still significant and should be enough to justify investment in this climate policy.

Considering the entire range of possibilities and thus a more conservative perspective, the Royal Society Report has issued possible ranges of global CO 2 removal potential. The upper limit for afforestation is at an annual uptake of 20 GTCO 2 , roughly in line with Bastin et al.

While afforestation plays a significant role in mitigating climate change, it seems as if the numbers used by Bastin et al. Now, even if all the available land that could be afforested will actually be afforested, growth of trees is not certain. All this is more likely in a warming world with growing population in which climate zones are moving. We also need to keep in mind that relatively lower atmospheric CO 2 also means less flux of carbon into other biomass stocks and into ocean Jones et al.

Therefore, atmospheric CO 2 will not fall by the cumulative amount of carbon held in new forests, but less, reducing the impact on warming and climate change even more. To test the high-end scenario in En-ROADS, maximum available land for afforestation is increased to Mha and a rapid afforestation planting time of 12 years is assumed, starting in This scenario leads to a warming of 3.

On the left hand graph, we observe that net CO 2 removals from afforestation first increase very quickly at an exponential rate, then reach an inflection point to increase at a decreasing rate until reaching a peak of about The graph in the upper-right hand shows greenhouse gas emissions by gas.

An afforestation policy does not affect the other greenhouse gases, thus they are the same as in the BAU scenario. CO 2 removals from afforestation do not stay on this high level left graph but decrease because of natural processes of stored carbon after sequestration typical biomass and soil release rates, through bacterial respiration decay and wildfire , which is why land-use CO 2 slightly increases towards the end of the century.

The key insight here is that while afforestation does remove a critical mass of CO 2 and reduces temperature and afforestation efforts are a very crucial contribution to climate change mitigation, it is not a silver-bullet. Afforestation helps, and it is an important part of a silver-buckshot suite of policies and behavior change. We find that this uptake is similar to:. There are many approaches that all accomplish mitigating climate change of which afforestation is a very important way to tackle the climate crisis.

Using the same scenario settings as outlined for Figure 1 above, we take a look at CO 2 emissions by source Figure 2 below. We see that afforestation has a modest effect. However, when we apply other policies as well Figure 3 below , the green area carbon dioxide removal becomes larger in comparison to the other areas carbon dioxide emissions.

In this scenario, fossil fuels are kept in the ground; coal peaks around , gas around , and oil around Note that, in this two degree scenario, the afforestation proposed in Bastin et al. Furthermore, restoring forests is important for many reasons other than their important role in removing carbon from the atmosphere.

First, they provide a natural habitat for many species that are currently under threat, thus ensuring biodiversity. Second, they stabilize soil and thus prevent land degradation. Additionally, the idea that planting trees will save us from climate change is incorrect.