Afforestation

Because vegetation and climate are so strongly related, rapid changes in climate will impact plant distributions, alter the makeup of natural communities, and threaten forest sustainability. Due to increases in temperature, the limited availability of water, and other environmental factors, entire forests are disappearing and new ecosystems are taking their place. Deforestation contributes to the increasing amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere and is influencing climatic change. A pragmatic and economical place to begin restoring the balance of the global carbon cycle is through the process of planting trees on open land, which is known as afforestation.

Need for Afforestation

Forests exert a strong influence on the environmentdue to their ability to slow the rate of greenhouse gas emissions by acting as a sink for CO2. Therefore, they are a critical element in mitigating climate change. Numerous studies have verified that deforestation has an influence on local, regional, and global climates. The rate of deforestation in the Amazon and elsewhere has rapidly increased in recent years. Most of the clearing is due to cattle ranching, leading to a decrease in biodiversity, weakening of the hydrologic cycle, and accelerated global warming.

Additional global warming is due to the disruption of global rainfall patterns through reduced evaporation and transpiration, which will cause a reduction in forest cover and the drying up of forests. Several options for reducing CO2 include curbing deforestation, establishing reforestation and afforestation projects, enhancing management and harvesting techniques, and maximizing urban forests. Protecting existing forests and planting new forests can help reduce the greenhouse effect, and a number of multidisciplinary mitigation options revolving around forests are surfacing as researchers collectively consider the threat of climate change.