Costa Rican teak plantation (IMAGE)
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Trees supply many benefits, and many nations have committed to reforesting large swaths of land as part of their efforts to address climate change. As an example, this is a teak plantation in Costa Rica. However, new research from UMBC finds that some trees planted in the tropics may do more harm than good. The authors found that 92 percent of new tree plantations planted in the tropics between 2000 and 2012 were in biodiversity hotspots. Fourteen percent were in arid biomes, where trees are unlikely to thrive and likely to damage existing ecosystems like grasslands, which are heroes of carbon sequestration in their own right. Tree plantations had also encroached into 9 percent of accessible protected areas in the humid tropics, such as national parks. “We need to be cognizant that not all tree planting is beneficial for the ecosystem involved,” says Matthew Fagan, the lead author on the new study. “The right tree in the right place is the right answer.”
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Matthew Fagan
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