Due to temperature and precipitation fluctuations, places that formerly produced crops would suddenly fail while others that were previously unsuitable might become desirable. Over time, though, soils everywhere would become depleted, requiring significant amounts of fertiliser for crops to survive. Further heating would eventually render most places uncultivatable and unliveable.
On top of these devastating changes would be health impacts. Trees clean the air by absorbing pollutants and trapping particulate matter on their leaves, branches and trunks. At least lives are saved as a result and at least , cases of acute respiratory issues are avoided. Trees help to absorb air pollution by trapping particulates in their tissues Credit: Getty Images. A sudden loss of forests everywhere could trigger a temporary spike in our exposure to zoonotic infections such as Ebola, Nipah virus and West Nile virus, he says, as well as to mosquito-borne diseases like malaria and dengue fever.
A growing body of research also points to the fact that trees and nature are good for our mental wellbeing. Trees also seem to help the body recover: a famous study from revealed that patients recuperating from surgery experienced shorter hospital stays if they had a green view rather than one of a brick wall. Trees play a vital role in many cultures - if lost, they would be deeply mourned Credit: Getty Images.
The loss of trees would also be mourned on a deep, cultural level. Trees are staples of countless childhoods and feature heavily in art, literature, poetry, music and more. They have factored into animistic religions since prehistory and play prominent roles in other major religions practiced today. Buddha attained enlightenment after sitting beneath the Bodhi Tree for 49 days, while Hindus worship at Peepal trees, which serve as a symbol for Vishnu.
In the Torah and Old Testament, God makes trees on the third day of creation — even before animals or humans — and in the Bible, Jesus dies on a wooden cross built from trees. All told, human beings would struggle to survive in a world without trees. The air over the farm is on average 5 degrees Celsius hotter than in the forested reserve over the fence: 34 degrees C, rather than 29 degrees C. The difference rises to a staggering 10 degrees at the end of the dry season, says Coe.
And the dry season is lengthening. Why these huge changes? The answers lie not in global climate change but in the impact of deforestation, says Coe. In the old days, the trees of the rainforest acted as water pumps, recycling most of the rainwater, which they pumped from underground and released into the atmosphere from the pores in their leaves, a process known as transpiration.
Transpiration requires large amounts of energy, taken from solar radiation. So it cools the air of intact forest. But take away the forest, and the air is instantly much hotter. The transpiration of a typical large Amazon tree also releases around liters of water a day into the atmosphere. The moisture creates clouds and rain that sustain the forest. Three-quarters of the rain falling in the forested parts of the Xingu Basin is recycled back into the air in this way.
But that proportion falls to 50 percent or less if the trees are replaced by pasture or croplands. The Amazon currently still generates about half its own rainfall, with some rain blowing on the trade winds from the Atlantic Ocean falling and then transpiring back into the air five or six times as it crosses the vast basin.
The climate shifts. The change is especially important at the end of the dry season. Tapping water deep underground, trees keep transpiring even after months without rain. In fact, thanks to the energy from the unrelenting sun, they transpire even more in the dry season than in the wet season.
Research at Tanguro has confirmed that this is vital to ending the dry season, because it provides the first moisture for the rains to resume, says Coe. As the climate changes, so does the vegetation. Rising temperatures and a longer dry season, both caused by the loss of trees, create water stress that flips ecosystems from rainforest to savanna. You must log in or sign up to reply here. With all of those cooling services lost, most places where trees formerly stood would immediately become warmer.
In another study, Prevedello and his colleagues found that complete removal of a 25 sq km patch of forest caused local annual temperatures to increase by at least 2C in tropical areas and 1C in temperate areas. Raging fires, deforestation, and global warming are tearing the mighty rainforest apart as we speak, and just this year, there were a record 74, fires in Brazil.
That is acres each minute. Assuming there are around trees per acre this depends greatly on the species, the age of the trees and if the area has been managed making trees being destroyed every minute. There might be 3. Leaving just Billion trees for the rest of the world! Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search.
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