Six important things to know about forests

By Bisola Adeyemo

Forest is a complex ecological system in which trees are the dominant life-form. It has nature’s most efficient ecosystem, with a high rate of photosynthesis affecting both plant and animal systems in a series of complex organic relationships.

The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) defines a forest as, “Land spanning more than 0.5 hectares with trees higher than 5 meters and a canopy cover of more than 10 percent.

Forest sustainable management and their use of resources are key to combating climate change, and contributing to the prosperity and well-being of current and future generations.

Forests also play a crucial role in poverty alleviation and in the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

To increase awareness about the role forests play in sustaining lives on earth by providing food, water, and shelter to animals and human beings, the United Nations set aside every 21 of match to observe the importance of forests in an environment.

1) Forests are storehouses of biodiversity.
The world’s forests are thought to house more than 50 percent of the world’s plant and animal species. The highest biodiversity ever recorded on land is in the Amazon rainforest, specifically the area where the Amazon meets the Andes Mountains in Peru and Ecuador. Forests in Borneo, New Guinea, northwestern South America and Central America, and the Congo Basin are other hotbeds of species richness. Some of these forests may house more than 300 species of tree per hectare.

2)Forests have hundreds of billions of trees.
While the exact number is still being hostly debated, scientists agree that the world’s forests have hundreds of billions of trees.

3) Forests store massive amounts of carbon and afford other important ecosystem services upon which life on Earth depends;
When plants grow they sequester atmospheric carbon in their tissues via the process of photosynthesis. Because forests are full of large trees and other plants, they store massive amounts of carbon. But when they are burnt or chopped down, much of that carbon is released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases (nitrous oxide, methane, and other nitrogen oxides).

The clearing and burning of tropical forests and peatlands accounts for about ten percent of greenhouse gases from human activities.

4) The world still loses vast areas of forest every year:
Estimates of global forest loss vary depending on how forests are defined, the methodology for measuring loss, and timeframes, but there is no question that large areas of forest continue to be chopped down.
According to the U.N.’s survey of national forestry agencies, net loss of natural forests averaged 6.6 million hectares per year between 2010-2015.

5) Most forest loss is the result of human activities:
Mankind is responsible for most forest loss worldwide. The biggest drivers of deforestation are agriculture and livestock production, logging, and forest fires.
Humans are worsening outbreaks of fire via forest degradation, intentional fire-setting, and contributing to climate change, which exacerbates climate change in places where forests do not typically burn, like the Amazon.

The biggest causes of deforestation in the tropics are commercial and subsistence agriculture, including cattle ranching and palm oil production; road construction, which opens up remote forest areas to conversion; and logging.

6)Forests are recovering in some countries:

While most of the world’s attention is on forest loss, forests are recovering in some countries. For example, vast areas of forest have regrown in North America and Europe following centuries of destruction.

More recently, countries like Costa Rica and New Zealand have reversed deforestation trends. And several nations, like China and Rwanda, are aggressively replanting forests to restore ecosystem function.

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