Posted on 07/12/2011 4:42:16 PM PDT by Mind-numbed Robot
The ecological services provided by urban trees are often overlooked, the study says Continue reading the main story Related Stories
Urban tree planting plan launched Calls to green 'concrete jungle' Urban trees 'aid migrating birds'
Plants in cities and towns make a major contribution towards removing carbon from the atmosphere, a study suggests.
The authors say the research is the first of its kind in Europe to quantify how much carbon is stored within this urban vegetation.
They add that the data are vital because local authorities are key in helping the UK reach its target of cutting CO2 emissions by 80% by 2050.
The findings will be published in the Journal of Applied Ecology.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
Planting trees also cuts the heat in a city, which makes summer more tolerable.
So scientists are discovering that...plants store carbon dioxide? Gasp! Why, who’d have imagined such a thing!
That is the value of the billions of dollars in research grants we give to liberals. Sometimes they come up with some astounding discoveries. :-)
But it interferes with the global warming hoax. To liberals, the only purpose of trees is to provide a venue for protesting the greedy corporations who are in the logging business. What about the spotted owl and the barn owl? Are you heartless enough to cut their homes down?
That is the benefit of trees.
Thanks Mind-numbed Robot. But of course, CO2 can [vile act description omitted].
The liberals are hijacking climatology, and I don’t intend to let them.
The US has a huge amount of pine trees. They are fast growing and tend to be good for cheap lumber, chip and paper.
However, what the US needs are far more hard wood forests, which might take a hundred years to reach maturity, but produce much finer wood as well as having a different blend of other plants and animals than pine. But nobody is interesting in planting such forests, because it takes too long to exploit them for profit.
Cherry trees are a good example. They are planted for fruit, but only produce their best crops for 10-20 years. After that, they are cut down and new trees are put in their place. Only if they were left alone to mature would they produce very fine quality cherry lumber, that makes top quality furniture.
And the US and foreign markets are so voracious for chip that lumber companies are buying up private old growth hardwood forests in the South and grinding up very valuable trees for chip board, a tremendous waste.
The savior of hardwood forests could come, however, in the form of hemp. Not only does it make a superior paper of far better quality than wood pulp paper, but it can also be used as chip. And it grows even in marginal ground with little watering, fertilizer or pesticide.
In short order, it would take over the paper and chip industry, which would strongly drive down the price of pine lumber, and divert the voracious appetite to a more renewable resource.
Chipping old-growth hardwood? What a sin!
We have black cherry here in NH. They don’t seem to compete as well with other trees. The older, slower growing, cherry trees produce a nice dark colored heartwood.
Getting blight-resistant chestnut trees into the forests would also be great.
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