If you can't hug a person, hug a tree!!
Here are two very important reasons why we should all save trees...
(1) Without Trees, Earth Won't Be Able to Breathe
Do you ever think about the quality of the air you breathe?
The oxygen we breathe is something we take for granted as its something that our body does on autopilot, but what if there were no trees?
If we could survive at all, someone would have to invent and develop a clever gas mask that manages to capture and filter what oxygen is left in the air and they'd definitely only be a small fraction of the world population left.
Isn't that a scary thought?
And this section is just one of the many reasons trees should be of utmost importance to everyone of us and why we should spend a little time dedicated to saving them.
Trees are essential in maintaining the quality of air, as they are part of Earth's crucial carbon cycle. The mass of a tree is not built from the nutrients from the soil, but the greenhouse gas C02 it pulls from the air. Trees cleverly take the C02, process it and do something really awesome, they take away the C and they release the 02 part back out.
Trees are truly amazing organisms as they take out poisonous C02 from the air and turn it into a form that doesn't create chaos in our climate. They lock away the C02 in their leaves, trunks and roots.
When rainforests, or any forests or trees for that matter, are burnt the C02 that the trees have stored is released right back into the atsmosphere.
One mature leafy tree can create as much oxygen in a season to support the breathing requirements of 10 people for a whole year.
Here is some math for you...
There are 400 billion trees on earth and the the population of the world is 6.7 billion, which means every person has 60 trees to rely on.
How much oxygen do you think that we will have if the population keeps growing and the trees keep decreasing?
It won't be long before those numbers become critical.
But you should also know...
It's not just C02 that they cleanse from the air...
Trees really are soldiers on the environmental frontline.
They don't just remove carbon, they get rid of a whole lot of other unpleasant stuff, you would not want to breathe in.
On top of C02, trees also absorb pollutants like carbon monoxide, sulfer dioxide and nitro dioxide through the respiration process. This process lowers the air temperature – it could be up to 12 F with no trees.
There are so many objects in our homes and workplaces, as well as the construction materials used to make them that emit pollutants like trichloroethylene, benzene and formaldehyde, to name a few. Plants and particularly trees use a process called phytoremediation to rid the air of these toxins by absorbing them, pushing them down to their roots, where the toxins are broken down by microbes.
On top of this, trees can cleanse the air by intercepting tiny airborne particles by depositing them on the underside of their leaves.
These tiny particles of dust can become entrenched in our lung tissue and lead to respiratory infections and asthma.
Recently, the World Health Organisation stated that air pollution (indoors and outdoors) causes 7 million deaths each year and is the number one environmental cause of death in the world. Just imagine how high this number could go if trees disappeared completely from our world.
Let's all make saving trees a part of our day and at the same time we will be improving our world.
(2) Without Trees, Earth's Soil Could Become Infertile
Deforestation also damages soil, because just as trees absorb pollutants from the air, they filter harmful pollutants and chemicals from the soil, through the phytoremediation process. The trees will either store the pollutants in their wood or change the pollutants into less harmful matter. Trees can also absorb sewerage overflow, contaminated run off and roadside spills.
In Enkoping, Sweden, willow trees are being harnessed to purposefully recycle waste. The town spreads its waste (sewage sludge, recycle liquids from landfills and reuse wastewater) around the trees and the trees decompose and recycle it. This recycling usage of trees could benefit many towns and countries, who would do well to take a leaf out of Enkoping's book.
Trees also protect the world from soil erosion, as their network of roots both improve soil quality by providing much needed nutrients and stabilising huge amounts of soil.
Tree roots are responsible for holding entire ecosystems together and protecting them against erosion by wind or water. Of course, deforestation causes soil erosion, but this soil erosion can cause more life threatening circumstances, like dust storms and landslides. Also, no trees would eventually, due to soil erosion, mean that the soil would lose its arability causing agriculture to fail and us humans could face starvation.
In fact, 2015 has seen a spate of dust storms all over the world – China, Belarus and United Kingdom to name a few of the more unsual places. The dust storms have blocked out the sunlight and caused chaos on the roads and in the air and on peoples' lungs no doubt.
Experts cannot seem to pinpoint a reason for this increase in apocalyptic like dust storms (or what the Arabians would call haboobs), although I am inclined to agree with NASA's point of view, as expressed in the Daily Mail: “Approximately half of dust in today's atmosphere may be the result of changes to the environment caused by human activity, including agriculture, over grazing and the cutting down of forests.”
Here is a short story to demonstrate what these dust storms would be like and they could be a permanent part of earth life...
Haboob – Foreshadowing in Pitch Black
Light cut in from the blinds and cascaded little lines across the floor. He watched them ripple as they came over his body—the shapes of his legs and wrinkles in his clothes causing little, sharp cuts in the light.
What annoyed him, though, was some of the light caught the screen of the television and completely eclipsed his ability to watch. He fussed with the blinds, squinting in pain from the jagged sun, hastily tiring, trying to do damage control on what was supposed to be a lazy Sunday afternoon.
He flapped the blinds and kicked up dust, which plumed into the air and snuck into his lungs. The coughing fit nearly killed him, and he contemplated the pitiful fact that mankind was now so complacent that he had become vulnerable to detriments of a poor television viewing experience.
He flipped through channels wanting something in space; something completely different than the drab churn and burn of his day-to-day—something cosmic and metallic.
He finally found something—a knockoff of sorts, but it would do: two men on a space station having casual conversation. Atmosphere check; sustainable. Climate; habitable. As the program cut to deep space, he lay back and relaxed…
…Why was it so dark? The program cut back to inside the space station and the colors blared. He turned the TV off; he could hardly see his hands in front of him. He opened the blinds to see a gray, grimy mess smearing across the sky, but there wasn’t supposed to be a storm.
In the distance, he could see a blackness looming.
What was causing this?
He shut the blinds and walked over to a little lamp next to his chair. He pulled the string: nothing. He pulled it again—flickering, then nothing.
The TV was the same—turned on to a spattering of colors splashing in and out, and then nothing. Should he call his family?
With nothing left to pay attention to, he returned to the window and opened the blinds.
Pitch Black.
He tried fussing with the blinds again—pitch black. It was like the building had sunk to the bottom of the ocean. He could barely make out shapes in the distance. This was something out of nightmares—or biblical text.
He didn’t know the half of it.
The window was a stubborn piece of work to begin with, so at first he didn’t think twice about how much force he needed to thrust upwards to get the thing to move an inch.
Then he managed to crack it a bit. The sounds of a thousand snakes filled the room—an incessant hissing that sent chills down his spine. He got down on one knee and pushed the window open the rest of the way.
The shapes in the distance were slowly subsiding.
What in the world was going on?
He stuck his head out.
Terrible mistake.
Immediately it was like he was smacked with sandpaper. He recoiled, writhing in annoyed pain—rubbing his eyes and nose—and spitting all over his floor. It was as if he had pressed he face down into the shoreline and snorted as hard as he could.
A loud crash finally diverted his attention. He wiped away enough grime from his eyes to concentrate, and without daring to put his face back outside, stared out the window—straight down to the ground.
Car lights began to congest and pile, as their horns screamed into the darkness like crying horses.
What caused this?
How long was it going to last?
This was a Haboob, and they were only getting worse and worse.
Imagine the world being like that all the time. I don't even want to. Let's go save some trees.
The Tree Saving Quest:
Mission 1: A Quick Click
Did you know that all your have to do is click on a link and you will either save trees, or get trees planted on your behalf?
Each one of links given in a moment will have buttons, or icons to press, which when pressed, will save trees! The links are either sponsored, or display adverts, which is how your clicks equal saving trees.
Below are 4 click to donate sites, which you can try to make a habit of clicking every day to get trees planted, or stop getting trees destroyed.
(There are many causes and charities that can be supported with clicks everyday.)
http://www.care2.com/click-to-donate/rainforest/
http://ecologyfund.com/ecology/_ecology.html
http://therainforestsite.greatergood.com/clickToGive/trs/home
http://www.landcareniagara.com/
Sources
Images: Pixabay and Giphy
Research and Statistic Sources:
http://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/our-science/no_trees_no_humans
http://forestry.about.com/od/treephysiology/tp/tree_value.htm
http://www.yostdaniel.com/my-writing/four-amazing-reasons-to-go-out-right-now-and-hug-a-tree
http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2013/03/how_much_is_that_tree_worth_po.html
http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/blogs/21-reasons-why-forests-are-important
http://www.savatree.com/whytrees.html
http://landarchs.com/8-amazing-facts-trees-didnt-know/
This information is brought to you as part of Challenge 30.
Let's all spread some hope and hugs to trees and people :)
P.S All the STEEM and STEEM DOLLARS from this post will be donated to @verbal-D to help with this:
P.P.S Don't forget to enter your sea related poem to my Runaway Rhymes competition. Every entry (up to 3 allowed) gets 1 STEEM and there is of course a 1st, 2nd and 3rd prize up for grabs. Deadline 15th January. I look forward to reading your rhyme.