The Importance of Trees for Humans and Animals

There were once more trees on earth than all of the stars in milky way, and trees, one of the plants that helps earth running — and one of the plants that is decreasing at an alarming rate because of human activities.

Trees helps on producing oxygen which every single organism would need. Everyday an adult needs around 11000 liters of air each day, so it’s about 99000 liters of oxygen each season, 4015000 liters of air each year. A Mature leafy tree can produce as much oxygen as for ten adults inhale in a year. Which is about 10 million liters of oxygen a year. Around 5 percent of carbon dioxide in the air is lethal to humans. Trees and other plants can “breathe” like humans and other animals do, but the difference is that animals inhale oxygen and turns the oxygen into carbon dioxide, but plants go through a process called photosynthesis and produce oxygen. Basically the plant takes carbon dioxide in little holes on their leafs, and uses it to make glucose (sugar) for them to survive, after that releases water and oxygen from the little holes, which adds water vapor to the air. The oxygen trees produce helps us breathe and helps other animals breathe.

Carbon dioxide is what humans and animals breathe out and feeds the trees, and we breathe in oxygen. The trees not only produce oxygen, it also takes in carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide can absorb heat from the sunlight, we need enough carbon dioxide so we don’t freeze, but not too much. As we know climate change is happening now due to greenhouse gases which includes carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is used by trees to grow, but because we don’t have a lot of trees now, there is more carbon dioxide in the world, and that means more heat is absorbed, which makes the world warmer. Global warming also destroys the ozone layer, which protects us from the sun’s waves if the ozone layer is getting thinner, we will have hotter summers and colder winters. If there’s going to be more trees there will be less carbon dioxide and global warming WILL stop if there is enough trees.

Trees can also help stop soil erosion. Soil erosion, which is a natural disaster that happens when soil becomes loose on the mountains and “slips” down the mountain and the sol that slips down the hill is usually the upper layer of soil. The big problem is, the upper layer of soil has the most fertile layer of soil, and when soil erosion happens, it will affect the people locally, especially farms that’s growing props. Types of soil erosion is a movement that happens naturally without any forces and doesn’t cause any really severe harm, but now they’re usually the ones I mentioned above. Because of the roots of the trees which helps the soil stay in place. It’s basically having little sticks stick into the soil to prevent it from slipping down the mountains.

The root system of trees can also help purify water. The root system takes water from underground and purifies the water, and releases the water into the atmosphere, which is water vapor, and makes sure that less water end up in the sewers. One single 30 meter tree can take out as much as 41,639 liters of water out of the soil. 3 meters might sound a lot, but usually, it’s just the height of one floor in a building.

Trees are also home to thousands of animals. Animals build shelter, rest, and reproduce in trees. A single oak tree can be a home to up to 500 different species.

Trees not only help environmentally, trees can also help us as humans mentally, economically, and physically. A study has shown if we are close to trees, our mood will be improved, giving us a calm and peaceful mood, helping us reduce stress, depression, anxiety, anger, and more. Not only it helps us calm down and reduce stress, study has shown, people who usually have contact with trees have lower blood pressure and has less hormones that are related to stress.

Trees can also reduce air temperature (because carbon dioxide absorbs heat, and trees use the carbon dioxide for growth) by consuming carbon dioxide and blocking sunlight and creating shade and also reflects back the sunlight. Having mature trees in the neighborhood can lower around 3 degrees C°. Imagine a burning hot day of 31°C and a warm day with 28°C. Trees can also help cool down buildings, which means that we don’t need air conditioning! Air conditioning which produces carbon dioxide and uses up energy harms the environment, causing more carbon emission, but without air conditioner, the environment is saved, your money is saved, and energy is conserved. Trees around buildings on average can help save around 30% of the energy and money used on air conditioning, which means if you pay 50 RMB for air conditioning in a month, around 10-15 RMB will be saved, and in a year, you will save 120-180 RMB! Saving energy can also stop harmful gases going into the air, therefore, forming pollution.

Trees can also act like a sound barrier, which means trees also block sound. It’s not like when you have a tree you can’t hear anything, but trees can help reduce loud sound, such as kids crying in your neighbors, and other sound that might seem annoying. Trees can block up to 15 decibels of sound, that’s almost like wearing a pair of ear plugs! But instead of the annoying feeling of foam blocking your ears, you have something beautiful to look at. Trees reduce sound in two ways, one way is absorbing the sound, the other is making the sound go back. If sound hits a hard material, it bounces back, if sound hits a flexible material like branches, the sound might turn into other energy resources, which can help the tree grow.

Trees can even help when you are going to sell your apartment. Just planting trees around your house can raise the value of your property by 15%, that means if you just plant a few trees around your house, you’d get free money. If it’s an apple tree, you can even sell the fruits.

Not only trees take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen, trees also takes in harmful gases, examples are: Carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, etc. Trees they produce food, an apple tree can produce 15-20 bushels of fruit per year, trees not only provide food for humans, trees also provide food for animals. Because trees provide food, providing income. By selling the fruits or orchard, will provide you economical opportunities. Trees also stop traffic, because there are trees around the roads, people will spend more time watching the trees and not just drift through the roads. Trees can also help block dust. A tree in your backyard beside the window can act as a dust filter which helps block the dust from going into your window.

The amazon rainforest covers 2.1 million square miles which is around 5.4 million square kilometres, where the amazon basin is 2.6 million square miles/6.7. And to give a better idea of the amazons rainforest, if the amazon rainforest is a country, it would rank 9th in the world by size.

The amazon river is home to 5000 known species of fish in the amazon river and a lot more is remained unknown, it’s also home to Pink dolphins, sloths, jaguars, monkeys, snake, caiman, and blue butterflies.

The amazon rainforest has a massive biodiversity between the plants, there are 10 million of plants, animal, and insects. The amazon rainforest has set records in biodiversity in the world, you can find 40-100 kind of trees in the rainforest in 1-hectare plot of land (0.01 square kilometres), and more than 40,000 species of plants play a important role in the local water cycle in the amazon rainforest.

The amazon rainforest is really important, as we all know the amazon rainforest is called the lungs of the earth because it absorbs carbon dioxide and produces oxygen. The amazon rainforest produces more than 20% of the oxygen in our world. The amazon rainforest helps stabilize earth’s climate, habitat for a huge amount animals, maintains the water cycle, fights droughts erosion and flood. We can’t talk enough about the amazing side of the amazon, but what will happen if the amazon is gone? Since the amazon produces 20% of the oxygen on earth, it would be gone, right? Yes that’s right, but there way more to that… The amazon rainforest reduces the carbon dioxide in the world, carbon dioxide causes global warming, and global warming causes all sort of problems in the world. The amazon rainforest also has 25% of the medicine ingredients, if it was gone entirely, we would lose some extremely essential ingredients for making medicine.

Before in the world, an estimate before is 3 trillion trees, but thats 8 times the best estimate now, the best estimate now is 400 billion trees (at most). Now 20% of the amazon is already gone, and we don’t want the amazon to be gone. Deforestation is one of the worst problems we are facing now. Something similar is called a wild fire, where a large area of forest is burnt down, and in this way releases a lot more carbon dioxide in the air. Killing trees also results in soil erosion, where the soil is placed in a place it shouldn’t be in and results in accidents we see, like soil falling off a hill.

Deforestation, meaning forests getting destroyed, cut down, brunt down, or just generally harmed. You might think deforestation is just less oxygen for us to breathe, but no, the consequences are way more severe.

As I said in the part about how trees are amazing, I mentioned that trees would take in carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide, as it absorbs heat, carbon dioxide can warm up the world, therefore causing climate change. Climate change has already taken away many species from our planet, and will be taking away more if we don’t stop deforestation. As a way of how deforestation happens is wild fire, which is burning down the trees. Compared to cutting them off, burning them is a worse choice, because burning trees would increase carbon emissions, which would cause more harm to the environment because, again carbon dioxide absorbs heat. The harm of climate change connects to literally every environmental problem, which includes: endangered animals, habitat destruction, sea level rising, etc. Because of global warming, there will me more intense weathers, such as droughts, dust storms, floods, heat waves, hurricanes, tropical storms, tornadoes, and wildfires. Because of global warming, the ten hottest year on earth has started since 1998. Not only causing chaos environmentally, it’s also making more environmental refugees, refugees that are moving because of the environment. It’s also causing diseases like malaria because the water is polluted and people have no clean fresh water supply for them, so they have to drink contaminated water therefore causing diseases like malaria.

Deforestation can make more fragile biomes. Fragile biomes are biomes like deserts and tundras. They’re called fragile biomes because the biomes I mentioned only have a few animals and plant that can survive in the extreme conditions of the biomes, which makes it hard to animals to find food, and usually animals only have 1-2 types of food, while in rainforests, they have many choices. If one species is gone from the biome, then the whole biome would most likely be effected, because animals have a limited choice of food and they can’t find any else. Because of deforestation, there is going to be more droughts, and more droughts meaning that there is a higher risk of places becoming dry. This action is also known as desertification, which is biomes becoming desserts.

Without enough trees, there will be a higher risk of droughts and floods. For example, if a rainforest suddenly went missing, there will still be water vapor in the air. When the place rains, the place will receive lots of rain at first, but because there isn’t any/enough vegetation to absorb the water. Because there aren’t any trees, there won’t be a lot of water vapor in the air because trees release lots of water vapor, therefore the place will have a drought. Also deforestation would cause more wildfires too. When wildfires happen more deforestation will happen because fire is not something that humans can control, and usually can’t be stopped once it happens. Wilde fires also cause more carbon emission than cutting the trees off.

Deforestation will cause habitat loss too. Habitat destruction, when a habitat of a species is destroyed. Habitat loss will make the animals “homeless” therefore making the animal endangered. Because trees are sources of food, if the trees are gone, animals might starve. Because herbivores feeds on trees, and carnivores feeds on herbivores, if there isn’t enough food, animals might starve. Habitat destruction can also cause a loss of biodiversity, which means animals going extinct or being endangered. A loss of biodiversity can cause fragile biomes to collapse.