The man who counted the trees on the planet

Batirama.Com 11/06/20190

The Welshman Thomas Crowther, 32, appointed professor at ETH University in Zurich, spotted a potential of 1200 billion trees that can be replanted without impacting agricultural production.

Let's move on to the sympathetic biography of a young man that nothing, really, predisposed to become a professor at the prestigious University of Zurich, if not the charisma.It all starts when the Welshman, after a thesis on mushrooms, joins the University of Yale and takes up a gigantic challenge: counting the trees of the planet.

It turns out that a "millennium" child, son of a German member of the Rome club, launched the ‘Plant for the Planet’ initiative in 2007 at nine years in 2007.Felix Finkbeiner's initiative unfolds like powder trail and is soon sponsored by the United Nations, by setting the goal of reaching a billion planted trees.

It remains to quantify the impact of such an initiative in terms of climate effect, if it ends.There is indeed an estimate of the number of trees by NASA, on the basis of satellite images which however show only the canopy.

400,000 counting points throughout the planet

Thomas Crowther will synthesize land data of more than 400,000 counting points spread across the planet, whose extrapolation will allow him to reach the estimate that the planet has around 3,000 billion trees, or seven times morethat NASA estimates.

In the process, the ‘Plant for the Planet’ program reviews its goals, going from 1 billion to a trifle of 1,000 billion trees to plant.Or a theoretical increase in world forest coverage of the order of a third party which, according to calculations by Thomas Crowther, would erase ten years of human carbon emissions.

We are still far from it, and the planet currently loses two trees per capita and per year, or 15 billion trees each year, even if the program launched by Felix Finkbeiner already claims 14 billion trees replanted, in particular thanks to the contributionmassive countries like China, Pakistan and India.

Understanding climate mechanisms also involves microbiology.© Eth Zurich / Peter Rueegg

A multidisciplinary approach for Crowther Lab

Crowther's study appeared in 2015 in the journal Nature and made a tobacco, while arousing lively animosity of the Trumpist camp during the electoral campaign, as the researcher highlights him from the outset during his inaugural conference.

Moreover, a little later, another study is published, which appears that a massive replanting of forests in Europe, of the order of the surface of Spain, would lose its effect of carbon capture because ofthe absorption of light by the leaves or needles, and the warming induced.

Likewise, voices have been raised after Fort Mc Murray fire to highlight the risks of an indiscriminate replanting, which can create delaying bombs with massive carbon emissions in the event of amembrance.Regardless of the political valuation of such points of view, in the sense of an immobilization of efforts, it seems urgent to better understand the interaction between forests and the climate.

The Crowther Lab is hitting there with a multi-disciplinary approach which now benefits from significant support from a Dutch NGO.The young team around Thomas Crowther looks both on forest behavior (biodiversity, trees, soil, mushrooms and microorganisms) and on communication issues.A big gap perfectly assumed.

South Africa is one of the areas where massively replant can have a sense.© Eth Zurich / Peter Rueegg

The research that acts

Climatology is a relatively recent discipline, but when we listen to the fascinating explanations of Thomas Crowther, one wonders if university research has completely remained away from the scientific questions which command the survival of humanity.

Unless the Crowther Lab is simply the manifestation of a new scientific research formula, which knows how to take light and capture financial support, faced with researchers stuck in their working and communication methods.

We can indeed criticize today reforestation approaches oriented towards the production of wood of lumber, and which dangerously dry the floors, as has happened in California with terrible effects, but undoubtedly also in China.

New scientific approaches

At the same time, one wonders what the university research system has done in past decades to prevent such drifts which are the fruit of the past.What were they concerned about, exactly?Industrial forest productivity?

This doubt which points when the classic functioning of research encourages to encourage new approaches such as those, precisely, a Crowther Lab which accompanies the development of a network of now 1.2 million (!) Measuring points of forests, always more precise in terms of breeding up information.

Besides, this team cannot be criticized for its inconsiderate dendrological extremism.Thus, in its inaugural lesson put online and whose only defect is that it is not subtitled in French, Thomas Crowther risks an assessment of the overall annual value of world forests, at 616 billion dollarsThey, and argues that these forests would lose a third of their value if they were replaced by monoculture.

As for the 'Plant for the Planet' campaign, it was reflected in its objective of 1000 billion trees following the conclusions of the research undertaken around the Welsh researcher, which spotted a potential of 1200 billion trees that can be replanted withoutimpact agricultural production.

Replant is good, but watching the plants is even better.© Eth Zurich / Peter Rueegg

Objective one billion trees in France

Replant thousand billion trees and reforest massively, this also concerns France.At ladle, the contribution of the metropolis would be a billion trees, the forest coverage of Switzerland.We are very far from it, even if the online ranking of the campaign ‘Thousand Billion Trees’ places France in an appreciable position.

We must not see the question of reforestation in the sole view of a competition with agricultural areas.In France, each year, 60,000 hectares of land are artificialized, the size of the Territoire de Belfort.Today, the share of artificialized territory borders on 10% against 8.3% in 2006.Which amounts to withdraw this surface from its contribution to the fight against greenhouse effects, without any contractual counterpart, and not even speaking of the heavy accounting of the carbon footprint of these operations.

The promoters have managed to bury a tax in the direction of compensation, and public works contractors watch over the grain, if we can say.Relaxing seriously and logically to replant a billion trees in France, in addition, this is a strong objective which will at least allow these drifts to question, while actively accompanying climate change.

If man protects trees, trees protect man.© Eth Zurich / Peter Rueegg

Source: Batirama.Com / Jonas Tophoven