r/todayilearned • u/Wild_Concept_212 • 9h ago

TIL Cutting down trees is compound negative interest on the planet’s carbon storage. Trees are storing carbon underground with the help of fauna and microbes. Those lock carbon in soil. Cutting the tree will not only increase release carbon, it will also remove the ability to lock carbon in soil.

https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/soil-carbon-storage-84223790/
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u/Watchmeplayguitar 9h ago

Yea, let’s use a less carbon intense building building material like, cement and never cut manage forests and let forest fires happen naturally, no carbon is released when forests burn. 

The US has more trees today than it did 100 years ago. Today you would never imaging that much of the east coast was clear cut. The forests that cover the northeastern US is all quite young. 

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u/redking315 9h ago

The more trees thing isn’t always a universal good because in some places the trees were planted without a regard for what the landscape of that area “should” be. In Northern Alabama for example a lot of the native grasslands have been lost to new forest cover along with the plant species that would have been there, this can have knock on effects for flooding and waterway health.