<p>Planting trees has a short term benefit in carbon sequestration but will not offset the carbon from fossil fuel burning. However, in some places trees provide a benefit of increasing soil carbon which can have a longer lasting effect. Thus, one benefit is to increase the time needed to implement replacements to fossil fuels. Trees can increase cooling through greater evapotranspiration than grassland, in some climate zones. That, however, may have an impact on water resources. Wood and paper products that are not recycled remove carbon from the natural system, although the effect is small.</p>

<p>Burning wood instead of fossil fuels has a positive impact on the carbon budget where the carbon is recycled back into tree plantations.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-01-16T04:50:00.717Z
No. Trees pump water into the atmosphere. In general (not always the case), evapotranspiration from forests is greater than from other vegetation.
haresfur
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-10-15T22:39:34.573Z
2019-10-15T22:39:34.573Z
haresfur
<p>Because the first few decades are crucial, so we are pragmatically buying time until we manage the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy sources.</p>

<p>I heard a podcast announcing Ted's initiative called Countdown, where they presented planting a trillion trees as a solution. A company Flash Forest is being founded on Kickstarter to the amount of 100k to plant a billion trees with drones.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-01-12T14:43:02.970Z
2020-01-12T14:43:02.970Z
mirekphd
<p>Timber, shade, nuts, fruits, animal habitat, flowers, landscaping, erosion control, poles for electric power distribution, syrup, spices,coffee, and other things unrelated to global warming. </p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-10-15T18:45:24.090Z
Of the many reasons I have planted over a thousand trees, not one was planted to collect carbon.
blacksmith37
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-10-29T11:01:25.837Z
Decades of consistent science based expert advice should not be dismissed as hysteria.
Ken Fabian
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-10-30T00:12:11.067Z
But none of the "scientists" have ever done a basic calculation to determine the degree of correlation, if any, between the two independent variables of global temperature and atmospheric CO2  ; That is normally the first step in actual science. Correlation is a mathematical factor that varies from 0 to 1.
blacksmith37
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-10-31T04:32:45.267Z
I notice the objectionable bit has been edited out. Rightly. The US National Academy of Sciences - as just one example - is satisfied the link between climate change and CO2 from emissions is real. "Scientists have known for some time, from multiple lines of evidence, that humans are changing Earth’s climate, primarily through greenhouse gas emissions." I trust the experts they draw on to know what is valid science and what is not.
Ken Fabian
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-10-15T16:26:20.497Z
2019-10-29T12:44:10.897Z
2019-10-29T12:44:10.897Z
blacksmith37
<p>Take a look to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_cycle" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Carbon Cycle</a>.</p>

<p>In the atmosphere there is around 700 Gt of carbon, most of it CO<sub>2</sub>. The living biomass (plants + animals) keep 600 Gt and the dead biomass is 1000 Gt.</p>

<p>So biomass it is very effective in order to fix CO<sub>2</sub> as it is fixing in 2 ways: photosynthesis (absorbing CO<sub>2</sub> and emitting O<sub>2</sub>) and, when biomass dies, then it is fixed on the ground.</p>

<p>When you deforest, you are removing the biomass that takes some direct CO<sub>2</sub> and you are exposing or removing the carbon fix on the ground.</p>

<p>Really, they are not the main actors on the picture: Oceans (38,400 Gt, 
lithosphere carbonates 60,000,000 Gt, lithosphere kerogen 15,000,000 Gt) but their cycles takes 100 years on the fastest one and hundreds of million years on the slower. But the fastest one is the biomass, and the most effective one is the tree. (Check Kiri tree)</p>

<p><a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6448/76" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Take a look</a></p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-10-19T12:19:58.953Z
2020-01-14T03:40:19.903Z
2020-01-14T03:40:19.903Z
David García Bodego
<p>Trees do not trap only CO2, they trap water and water vapour is a major contributor to climate change. In any case the research you cited is purely theoretical because the current growth of existing and newly planted trees is not enough to offset the quantity of trees that we are cutting down.</p>
<p>Other points:</p>
<ul>
<li>the research you cited does not take into account the impact that forested areas have on rain cycles.</li>
<li>the research you cited  assumes that all desert areas are covered by highly reflective quartz sand. But even in the Sahara you can find <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hbyamada" rel="nofollow noreferrer">dark rocky</a> landscapes that trap a lot of heat.</li>
</ul>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-07-25T14:29:15.667Z
2022-07-25T15:34:59.377Z
2022-07-25T15:34:59.377Z
FluidCode
<p>There have been <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_offset" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Carbon Offset schemes</a> by some nations, that pay for tree planting (or in some cases pay for not cutting down trees) in place of actual emissions reductions.</p>
<p>The politics around these can get murky with respect to motivations (&quot;why&quot;) but include both sincere efforts to make these work as one element of an emissions reduction policy - usually as a kind of stopgap action to give time for new investments in low emissions energy to flow through - as well as insincere efforts, to appear pro-active whilst not requiring substantive change to emitting industries. Or even to cash in on emissions reduction funding and/or funnel it inappropriately as political favors.</p>
<p>Because the climate issue had initially been widely framed as environmental and fringe rather than economic and mainstream it had been seen widely as driven by environmentalists who have long opposed land clearing and promoted re-forestation. Some of these schemes appear to have been developed by environmentalists and some to appease Environmentalists (and an increasing concerned public) who promote tree planting as a simple and environmentally beneficial act irrespective of climate change.</p>
<p>The climate problem has increasingly become seen as economic and mainstream over time and the effectiveness of reforestation as Carbon Offsets faces ongoing scrutiny, including by &quot;green&quot; political parties and others concerned with &quot;greenwashing&quot; (the contrived appearance of supporting emissions reductions goals whilst avoiding emissions reductions.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-07-25T07:49:15.513Z
2022-07-25T07:56:45.007Z
2022-07-25T07:56:45.007Z
Ken Fabian
<p>Planting trees is a good thing provided it is done properly. In Britain we have some valuable habitats such as heathland, peatbog, and wetland where planting trees would do ecological damage. If for example you managed to put a small stand of trees in an area of wetland, that would encourage hawks and corvids to take up residence to the disadvantage of wetland wildlife, and it's the same with heathland and peatbog. I doubt if it is possible to plant enough trees to make a major impact on the CO2 problem, but they will make some difference if only a small one, and in the right place can be a wildlife asset as well.</p>

<p>It would be impossible to grow trees in most true deserts, but in the Namib and Atacama there are places where sea mists roll in from the sea and condense on any object which protrudes from the sand. Maybe it's possible there. The most promising place for tree planting is in restoring the S.American rainforest, where there could be a huge environmental benefit. It could be financed with foreign aid money which wold go direct to impoverished rural communities, thus killing several birds with one stone.</p>

<p>There is a scheme underway in Britain to encourage the spread of sea grass meadows, which are important to the marine environment and apparently are more efficient at sequestering carbon than most things you can grow on land. Again the contribution will be small, but better than nothing. Sea grass is a true grass, but somehow manages to grow completely submerged in shallow salt water. Few people are aware of its existence. Restoring mangroves, which are basically small trees able to grow in tropical estuarine waters, is another area of environmental improvement which would also assist in the battle against CO2.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-09-15T07:48:37.710Z
People plant them for the reasons I state in my answer. As I give users credit for a modicum of intelligence, I didn't think further explanation would be necessary.
Michael Walsby
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-09-18T20:06:23.017Z
Nowhere in the answer did you actually say why planting trees is a good thing. Instead you answered how to grow trees improperly, a location where growing trees might be helpful ("huge environmental benefit" yet not explaining why), and then a random tangent about another plant. As I give answerers credit for a modicum of intelligence, I'm assuming you misread the question.
personjerry
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-10-15T09:36:56.630Z
Tree planting also helps reduce flooding https://theecologist.org/2019/mar/14/planting-trees-tackle-flooding
MiguelH
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-10-15T10:40:54.447Z
@ personjerry There are a thousand and one reasons why people plant trees: for fruit, for flowers, for foliage, for shade, for timber, for landscaping, I could go on and on, but it would be ridiculous to enumerate them all here. People would think I'd gone mad, but I haven't.  A few reasons are obvious from my answer.
Michael Walsby
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-07-25T15:34:20.783Z
Most of the British landscape is pastures, fields or industrial and urban areas. Heath and peatbog are not so extensive.
FluidCode
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-09-15T07:37:22.383Z
2019-09-15T07:37:22.383Z
Michael Walsby
<p>I've read answers that outline how if we afforested large (continental-scale) masses of land, it would do little in the way of tackling climate change. While it would sequester <span class="math-container">$\small\mathsf{CO_2}$</span> for about a century after it was planted (while growing) before reaching equilibrium, the planting of large quantities of trees would also sufficiently decrease the albedo of the land in which it was planted, that it would hold in a lot more heat than the land it replaced (likely desert or otherwise barren land). This means that, all things considered, it would make a negligible, if not negative impact, in tackling global warming. </p>

<p>If this is the case, why do we associate "planting trees" as a good thing, on the scale of individuals planting individual trees? Is it because generally, these trees improve ecosystem vitality/diversity, or for some similar reason unrelated to climate? </p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-10-15T18:53:12.697Z
[citation needed] re the albedo claim.
Semidiurnal Simon
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-10-20T00:49:16.403Z
People planted trees long before climate change was even an idea, tree planting festival started in the 1600's also consider arbor day.
John
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-01-14T06:25:01.580Z
It may not do much for climate change but it does help preserve wild spaces and the biodiversity that depends on them.
John
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-01-14T14:58:21.177Z
@gansub you are going to have to be more specific, Australia has many "situations"
John
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-01-14T15:46:54.800Z
@gansub Australia bushfire problem is because they have been suppressing fires instead of letting them burn naturally, The US learned the same lesson the hard way, fires allowed to burn naturally keep fuel levels low so fires do not get that large, the drought only exacerbates the problem. https://www.npr.org/2018/09/27/649649316/fire-ecologists-say-more-fires-should-be-left-to-burn-so-why-arent-they
John
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-01-15T05:02:08.703Z
@gansub most have aside from a few high elevation areas, the real hard way was there was significant loss of life in the US due to much worse fires.
John
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-07-22T16:07:48.457Z
It has been proven to be beneficial to RESEARCH what kind of vegetation would allow for the best plant progression to lead to natural reforestation in such places that were once at that stage. That would be for a slower although more future approach. Much research has to be done as to what is most natural to an area in accomplishing proper reforestation. There are many resources including The Cradle of Forestry near Asheville, NC. Today big business is proposing clear clearcutting in the Green mountain National Forest in VT. No mention to reforestation or environmental impact to those ecosyste
Wendy Schwarz
<climate-change><carbon-cycle>
If planting trees is ineffective to tackle climate change, why do people plant them?
Tanishq Kumar
# If planting trees is ineffective to tackle climate change, why do people plant them?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2019-09-15)

I've read answers that outline how if we afforested large (continental-scale) masses of land, it would do little in the way of tackling climate change. While it would sequester $\small\mathsf{CO\_2}$ for about a century after it was planted (while growing) before reaching equilibrium, the planting of large quantities of trees would also sufficiently decrease the albedo of the land in which it was planted, that it would hold in a lot more heat than the land it replaced (likely desert or otherwise barren land). This means that, all things considered, it would make a negligible, if not negative impact, in tackling global warming.

If this is the case, why do we associate "planting trees" as a good thing, on the scale of individuals planting individual trees? Is it because generally, these trees improve ecosystem vitality/diversity, or for some similar reason unrelated to climate?

**Tags:** climate-change, carbon-cycle

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: [citation needed] re the albedo claim.  
> **username_2**: People planted trees long before climate change was even an idea, tree planting festival started in the 1600's also consider arbor day.  
> **username_2**: It may not do much for climate change but it does help preserve wild spaces and the biodiversity that depends on them.  
> **username_2**: @gansub you are going to have to be more specific, Australia has many "situations"  
> **username_2**: @gansub Australia bushfire problem is because they have been suppressing fires instead of letting them burn naturally, The US learned the same lesson the hard way, fires allowed to burn naturally keep fuel levels low so fires do not get that large, the drought only exacerbates the problem. https://www.npr.org/2018/09/27/649649316/fire-ecologists-say-more-fires-should-be-left-to-burn-so-why-arent-they  
> **username_2**: @gansub most have aside from a few high elevation areas, the real hard way was there was significant loss of life in the US due to much worse fires.  
> **username_3**: It has been proven to be beneficial to RESEARCH what kind of vegetation would allow for the best plant progression to lead to natural reforestation in such places that were once at that stage. That would be for a slower although more future approach. Much research has to be done as to what is most natural to an area in accomplishing proper reforestation. There are many resources including The Cradle of Forestry near Asheville, NC. Today big business is proposing clear clearcutting in the Green mountain National Forest in VT. No mention to reforestation or environmental impact to those ecosyste  

---

## 7 answers

### Answer by username_6 on 2019-10-15. Score: 5

Timber, shade, nuts, fruits, animal habitat, flowers, landscaping, erosion control, poles for electric power distribution, syrup, spices,coffee, and other things unrelated to global warming.

> **Comments:**
> **username_6**: Of the many reasons I have planted over a thousand trees, not one was planted to collect carbon.  
> **username_7**: Decades of consistent science based expert advice should not be dismissed as hysteria.  
> **username_6**: But none of the "scientists" have ever done a basic calculation to determine the degree of correlation, if any, between the two independent variables of global temperature and atmospheric CO2  ; That is normally the first step in actual science. Correlation is a mathematical factor that varies from 0 to 1.  
> **username_7**: I notice the objectionable bit has been edited out. Rightly. The US National Academy of Sciences - as just one example - is satisfied the link between climate change and CO2 from emissions is real. "Scientists have known for some time, from multiple lines of evidence, that humans are changing Earth’s climate, primarily through greenhouse gas emissions." I trust the experts they draw on to know what is valid science and what is not.  

---

### Answer by username_4 on 2019-10-15. Score: 4

Planting trees has a short term benefit in carbon sequestration but will not offset the carbon from fossil fuel burning. However, in some places trees provide a benefit of increasing soil carbon which can have a longer lasting effect. Thus, one benefit is to increase the time needed to implement replacements to fossil fuels. Trees can increase cooling through greater evapotranspiration than grassland, in some climate zones. That, however, may have an impact on water resources. Wood and paper products that are not recycled remove carbon from the natural system, although the effect is small.

Burning wood instead of fossil fuels has a positive impact on the carbon budget where the carbon is recycled back into tree plantations.

> **Comments:**
> **username_4**: No. Trees pump water into the atmosphere. In general (not always the case), evapotranspiration from forests is greater than from other vegetation.  

---

### Answer by username_5 on 2020-01-12. Score: 3

Because the first few decades are crucial, so we are pragmatically buying time until we manage the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy sources.

I heard a podcast announcing Ted's initiative called Countdown, where they presented planting a trillion trees as a solution. A company Flash Forest is being founded on Kickstarter to the amount of 100k to plant a billion trees with drones.


---

### Answer by username_8 on 2019-10-19. Score: 1

Take a look to the [Carbon Cycle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_cycle).

In the atmosphere there is around 700 Gt of carbon, most of it CO2. The living biomass (plants + animals) keep 600 Gt and the dead biomass is 1000 Gt.

So biomass it is very effective in order to fix CO2 as it is fixing in 2 ways: photosynthesis (absorbing CO2 and emitting O2) and, when biomass dies, then it is fixed on the ground.

When you deforest, you are removing the biomass that takes some direct CO2 and you are exposing or removing the carbon fix on the ground.

Really, they are not the main actors on the picture: Oceans (38,400 Gt,
lithosphere carbonates 60,000,000 Gt, lithosphere kerogen 15,000,000 Gt) but their cycles takes 100 years on the fastest one and hundreds of million years on the slower. But the fastest one is the biomass, and the most effective one is the tree. (Check Kiri tree)

[Take a look](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6448/76)


---

### Answer by username_9 on 2022-07-25. Score: 0

Trees do not trap only CO2, they trap water and water vapour is a major contributor to climate change. In any case the research you cited is purely theoretical because the current growth of existing and newly planted trees is not enough to offset the quantity of trees that we are cutting down.

Other points:

* the research you cited does not take into account the impact that forested areas have on rain cycles.
* the research you cited assumes that all desert areas are covered by highly reflective quartz sand. But even in the Sahara you can find [dark rocky](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hbyamada) landscapes that trap a lot of heat.


---

### Answer by username_7 on 2022-07-25. Score: 0

There have been [Carbon Offset schemes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_offset) by some nations, that pay for tree planting (or in some cases pay for not cutting down trees) in place of actual emissions reductions.

The politics around these can get murky with respect to motivations ("why") but include both sincere efforts to make these work as one element of an emissions reduction policy - usually as a kind of stopgap action to give time for new investments in low emissions energy to flow through - as well as insincere efforts, to appear pro-active whilst not requiring substantive change to emitting industries. Or even to cash in on emissions reduction funding and/or funnel it inappropriately as political favors.

Because the climate issue had initially been widely framed as environmental and fringe rather than economic and mainstream it had been seen widely as driven by environmentalists who have long opposed land clearing and promoted re-forestation. Some of these schemes appear to have been developed by environmentalists and some to appease Environmentalists (and an increasing concerned public) who promote tree planting as a simple and environmentally beneficial act irrespective of climate change.

The climate problem has increasingly become seen as economic and mainstream over time and the effectiveness of reforestation as Carbon Offsets faces ongoing scrutiny, including by "green" political parties and others concerned with "greenwashing" (the contrived appearance of supporting emissions reductions goals whilst avoiding emissions reductions.


---

### Answer by username_10 on 2019-09-15. Score: -1

Planting trees is a good thing provided it is done properly. In Britain we have some valuable habitats such as heathland, peatbog, and wetland where planting trees would do ecological damage. If for example you managed to put a small stand of trees in an area of wetland, that would encourage hawks and corvids to take up residence to the disadvantage of wetland wildlife, and it's the same with heathland and peatbog. I doubt if it is possible to plant enough trees to make a major impact on the CO2 problem, but they will make some difference if only a small one, and in the right place can be a wildlife asset as well.

It would be impossible to grow trees in most true deserts, but in the Namib and Atacama there are places where sea mists roll in from the sea and condense on any object which protrudes from the sand. Maybe it's possible there. The most promising place for tree planting is in restoring the S.American rainforest, where there could be a huge environmental benefit. It could be financed with foreign aid money which wold go direct to impoverished rural communities, thus killing several birds with one stone.

There is a scheme underway in Britain to encourage the spread of sea grass meadows, which are important to the marine environment and apparently are more efficient at sequestering carbon than most things you can grow on land. Again the contribution will be small, but better than nothing. Sea grass is a true grass, but somehow manages to grow completely submerged in shallow salt water. Few people are aware of its existence. Restoring mangroves, which are basically small trees able to grow in tropical estuarine waters, is another area of environmental improvement which would also assist in the battle against CO2.

> **Comments:**
> **username_10**: People plant them for the reasons I state in my answer. As I give users credit for a modicum of intelligence, I didn't think further explanation would be necessary.  
> **username_11**: Nowhere in the answer did you actually say why planting trees is a good thing. Instead you answered how to grow trees improperly, a location where growing trees might be helpful ("huge environmental benefit" yet not explaining why), and then a random tangent about another plant. As I give answerers credit for a modicum of intelligence, I'm assuming you misread the question.  
> **username_12**: Tree planting also helps reduce flooding https://theecologist.org/2019/mar/14/planting-trees-tackle-flooding  
> **username_10**: @ username_11 There are a thousand and one reasons why people plant trees: for fruit, for flowers, for foliage, for shade, for timber, for landscaping, I could go on and on, but it would be ridiculous to enumerate them all here. People would think I'd gone mad, but I haven't.  A few reasons are obvious from my answer.  
> **username_9**: Most of the British landscape is pastures, fields or industrial and urban areas. Heath and peatbog are not so extensive.  

---

