215 million hectares of forest – an area bigger than Mexico – could grow back by itself, if we can just leave it alone
From The Conversation (31/10/24)…
215 million hectares of forest – an area bigger than Mexico – could grow back by itself, if we can just leave it alone
About 215 million hectares of land – an area bigger than Mexico – could be reforested naturally and without costly manual planting, our new research shows.
This would allow us to offset around 23.4 gigatonnes of global carbon emissions over the next three decades. That’s about 50 years worth of Australia’s carbon emissions (assuming 2023 emission rates continue).
Extensive and effective forest restoration is crucial to mitigating climate change and conserving biodiversity.
It’s vital we find cost-effective ways to get and keep more trees in the ground. One way to do this is just to let forests grow back by themselves. However, this isn’t possible in all deforested lands, as certain environmental conditions are needed for this approach to work.
Our research identified land where this approach had strong potential.
Our paper, published in the journal Nature, looked at where natural regeneration is likely to be successful due to the surrounding environmental conditions.
Natural regeneration is important because it is sometimes better than manual tree planting, which includes the costs of saplings, manual labour, fertilisation and maintenance.
Allowing forests to grow back naturally in deforested areas, such as this degraded land in Brazil, could be more cost-effective than manual reforestation projects. Author provided
