China is the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, but it is also engaged in a massive tree-planting program that has helped to offset tropical deforestation, and suck some of the climate-changing carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
Reforestation efforts in China, combined with regrowth on abandoned farmland
in Russia, have helped offset 81% of the loss in above-ground biomass
carbon lost to tropical deforestation since 2003, according to a new study in the academic journal Nature Climate Change.
“The
increase in vegetation primarily came from a lucky combination of
environmental and economic factors and massive tree-planting projects in
China,” said lead study
author Yi Liu of Australia’s University of New South Wales. Liu said
that the carbon storage in Chinese forests increased by about 0.8
billion tons (0.72 billion tonnes) between 2003 and 2012.
Analyzing
two decades worth of satellite data, researchers found that the amount
of carbon absorbed in vegetation had increased by about 4 billion tons
since 2003, even as tropical forests have shrunk in Indonesia and
Brazil, and pest infestations and wildfires have cleared forests in
Canada and the United States.
In contrast, southern Africa, northern Australia, and parts
of Russia have seen increases in vegetation, helped by more rainfall
and higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, which helped plants grow
“more vigorously,” according to the study. In China, most of the
vegetation increase has been in the north, where the country has focused
its main reforestation efforts, along with some additional growth in the southeast, Liu said.
Observers
say China’s reforestation program in the north—also known as the “Green
Great Wall”—is the world’s largest ecological engineering project. The
country is building a belt of trees that will stretch some 2,800 miles
across north and northwest China in an attempt to stop the advance of
the Gobi desert. Overall, the country has planted 13 million hectares (32 million acres) of new forest since 2008, according to the State Forestry Administration.
Critics
of China’s plans note that net tree cover continues to fall in the
country. That’s due in part to the fact that many of the new trees are non-native fruit and rubber tree plantations that
require large amounts of water, and are monocultures prone to disease
and pests. According to Global Forest Watch, China has been suffering a
net loss of about 523,248 hectares (1.29 million acres) of tree cover a
year since 2011. Since 2008, that yearly amount appears to be dropping.http://qz.com/391797/china-is-building-a-great-wall-of-trees-to-fight-climate-change-and-the-encroaching-gobi-desert/
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