By doing this, forests contribute to cloud formation and precipitation. Trees mediate the water cycle by acting as biological pumps: they suck water from the soil and deposit it into the atmosphere by transforming it from liquid to vapour. The planet’s climate would also be drastically altered in the short and long term. “Therefore, losing even individual trees can severely impact biodiversity locally.”
“Even a single, isolated tree in an open area can act as a biodiversity ‘magnet,’ attracting and providing resources for many animals and plants,” Prevedello says. In 2018, Prevedello and his colleagues found, for example, that overall species richness was 50 to 100% higher in areas with scattered trees than in open areas. The wave of extinctions would extend beyond forests, depleting wildlife that depends on single trees and small stands of trees as well. “There would be massive extinctions of all groups of organisms, both locally and globally.”
IF ALL MINECRAFT SOUNDS WERE REPLACED WITH MEDICS MEM DRIVER
Habitat loss is already the primary driver of extinction worldwide, so the destruction of all remaining forests would be “catastrophic” for plants, animals, fungi and more, says Jayme Prevedello, an ecologist at Rio de Janeiro State University in Brazil. “If we get rid of all the trees, we will live a planet that might not actually be able to sustain us anymore.”įor starters, if trees disappeared overnight, so would much of the planet’s biodiversity. “Let me just start with how horrible a world without trees would be – they are irreplaceable,” says Isabel Rosa, a lecturer in environmental data and analysis at Bangor University in Wales. Slash-and-burn is also especially on the rise in Indonesia and Madagascar. In August, the National Institute for Space Research showed an 84% increase in fires in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest compared to the same period in 2018. In many places, tree loss is accelerating. Especially in the tropics, many of the world’s remaining three trillion trees are falling fast, with about 15 billion cut each year, the Nature study states. Since the onset of the industrial era, forests have declined by 32%. Much of the deforestation has happened in recent years.
Without trees, all hope seems lost.įuriosa’s feelings were justified. When Furiosa arrives at the sacred spot, however, she finds only skeletal trunks and sprawling dunes. In Mad Max: Fury Road, Charlize Theron’s Furiosa strives to return to “the Green Place” – a tree-filled oasis in the otherwise lifeless wasteland that the Earth has become.