From towering coastal redwoods to dinosaur-era pine and spruce trees that make perfect Christmas trees, our woody plants have a lot going for them.
It seems that the loss of some species will not only endanger local forests; Studies show that it threatens entire ecosystems.
In 2021, a global assessment called The State of the World’s Trees revealed that one-third of all tree species are currently on the brink of extinction. This corresponds to approximately 17,500 unique tree species that are in danger of extinction.
This is more than double the number of endangered tetrapods (mammals, birds, amphibians and reptiles). And some trees are so rare that they still have a prominent component, such as the only palm in Mauritius, Hyophorbe amaricaulis.
In a subsequent study last year, the same researchers issued a “warning to humanity” about the consequences of these losses, supported by the statements of 45 scientists from 20 different countries. .
Conservation biologist Malin Rivers of Botanic Gardens Conservation International and her colleagues show that these losses have multiple impacts on our economy, livelihoods and food.
Most of our fruit comes from trees, as do many nuts and medicines, and US$88 billion worth of non-wood products are traded.
In the developing world, 880 million people depend on wood for fuel, and 1.6 billion people live within 5 kilometers (3 miles) of a forest and depend on it for food and income.
Trees contribute about $1.3 trillion a year to the global economy, but we destroy billions of them every year, clearing vast tracts of land for agriculture and development. Each tree is its own little world filled with all kinds of single and multicellular life forms, including plants, fungi, bacteria and other animals.
In fact, half of all the animals and plants in the world depend on tree habitats.
“Habitat loss is often the loss of trees, and that’s the bottom line when we look at animal or bird extinction concerns,” Rivers told Nature World News. Don’t look at the trees.”
As with all live systems, the loss of diversity makes the entire live link mix weaker.
This is because less diversity means less variation in immune response, genes, and responses to environmental conditions; This means it has less chance of surviving against the many threats in the complex web of interactions that life on Earth has.
Certain types of trees provide unique interactions and cannot replace others.
These include the unique dragon’s blood trees (Dracaena cinnabari) that remained in the ancient forests of the Oligocene, which contained many other species completely dependent on them, including many other plants.
So the extinction of one species, even if it’s still rare, can have a huge domino effect on all the others it comes into contact with. The species that depend on our declining forests have declined by about 53% since 1970, and more forests around the world are showing signs of increasing stress.
Trees interact with Earth’s soil, atmosphere, and air to clean the air and produce oxygen. They store three-quarters of the world’s accessible freshwater and more than half of the carbon dioxide problem.
If we lose enough trees, the carbon, water and nutrient cycles on our planet will fall into chaos.
“We show that diversified forests store more carbon than monocultures. This applies not only to carbon sequestration, but also to many ecological functions, such as providing habitat for animals, soil stabilization, pest and disease resistance and resilience,” said Rivers. We will lose diversity in trees, diversity in all living things: birds, animals, fungi, microorganisms and insects.
Few tree species are fortunate enough to take advantage of the rapid environmental changes we cause, such as fire encroachments on land. But both processes remove more.
Much more needs to be done to combat this on a collective level, but we can all play a role by recognizing the importance of trees.
The research was published in Plants People Planet.
Source: ScienceAlert
Source: Arabic RT
