Planting trees can be one tool to fight climate change - if we do it right

Dec 3, 2020

Trees are an essential tool in the fight against climate change, but haphazard planting can have unintended consequences. Image: Unsplash

Karen D. Holl

Professor of Environmental Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz

Pedro H. S. Brancalion

Member, Science Panel for the Amazon

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Ethiopia planted 350 million trees in a day. And its fight against deforestation does not stop there

Two pictures comparing the before and after images of a tree planting project

A forest restoration project in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest at the time of tree planting (left) and after two years. Image: The Applied Ecologist

A list showing the various reasons people plant trees

Why do people plant trees? Image: The Applied Ecologist

demonstrators put up a poster to where to plant native trees on a cattle ranching farm in the Amazon

Aligning decisions amongst a farmer, an international NGO and a restoration company about where to plant native trees on a cattle ranching farm in the Amazon. Image: Pedro Brancalion

A graphical animation showing how emote sensing approaches can help tree planting

Different remote sensing approaches (airplane and drone Lidar scanning, orbital sensors, and machine learning) to monitor forest restoration. Image: Daniel Papa

People gather in a field overlooking a nearby forest to discuss tree planting

Group discussion with numerous stakeholders to decide where to restore forests and to keep productive pasturelands on a Colombian farm. Image: Pedro Brancalio

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