Week 7 blog: A dead forest contributes to climate change?

The NY Times, just published an article about a group of researchers going down to Puerto Rico to examine the damage Hurricane Maria have caused on the forests there. This group of researchers want to explore how a forest damaged by extreme weather can impact our environment, especially how it can contribute to climate change. Due to climate change, it is forecast that our plant will be experiencing more extreme weathers such as what happened in Puerto Rico, and trees play a very important role in removing and storing carbon in our atmosphere. If an entire forest is damaged, the carbons that is stored inside the tree will be released into the atmosphere, and we are talking about million tons of carbon, which on top of that we have fossil fuel and human emission. By learning and tracking how these damaged forest recover and regrow is very critical to making sure the earth doesn't get more warmer due to the release of carbons from the dead trees. It is scary to vision what a million ton of carbon dioxide being release into the atmosphere and damaging the already weakening ozone would be like. If we don't get climate change under control, we will be seeing more major storms, weird and extreme weather conditions that can cause damages and destroy our environment.



Fountain, H. (2018, March 07). Forests Protect the Climate. A Future With More Storms Would Mean Trouble. Retrieved March 10, 2018, from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/07/climate/forests-storms-climate-change.html?smid=tw-nytclimate&smtyp=cur

Comments

  1. UnknownMarch 10, 2018 at 4:00 PM

    Wow, I never thought of that before, but it makes sense--that the carbon trees/plants store will be released into their environment once they are damaged. That is terrifying! We do have so many fossil fuels being released into the atmosphere already, with all the deforestation and damaged forests from extreme weather, it is no wonder why Earth is warming faster every year. I am glad this article was publish in the NY Times so a general audience will be aware of this issue, rather than being published in environmental science magazine or website where only a scientific audience will read about it.

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  2. UnknownMarch 11, 2018 at 8:09 PM

    I have heard that forests going down can truly impact climate change. Even with the fires that occurred in California might have been caused by climate change. I didn't realize how much carbon is actually being released by the dead trees. I know that climate change is real, but I hope that we can find a way to prevent tragic events from happening.

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