Tree planting has been widely touted as a cost-effective way of reducing global warming, due to trees’ ability to store large quantities of carbon from the atmosphere.
Tree planting has been widely touted as a cost-effective way of reducing global warming, due to trees’ ability to store large quantities of carbon from the atmosphere.
But, writing in the journal Nature Geoscience, an international group of scientists argue that tree planting at high latitudes will accelerate, rather than decelerate, global warming.
As the climate continues to warm, trees can be planted further and further north, and large-scale tree-planting projects in the Arctic have been championed by governments and corporations as a way to mitigate the worst effects of climate change.
However, when trees are planted in the wrong places - such as normally treeless tundra and mires, as well as large areas of the boreal forest with relatively open tree canopies - they can make global warming worse.
Read more at Aarhus University
Image: Snow reflects the sunlight back into space without converting it into heat (the albedo effect). The trees in this plantation in South Greenland reduce the albedo effect. (Credit: Mathilde le Moullec, Greenland Institute of Natural Resources)
