HOW PLANTS HELP IN REDUCING THE

GLOBAL WARMING
 How does tree planting reduce your carbon
footprint?
 As trees grow, they capture and store carbon dioxide
emissions from the atmosphere through the process
of photosynthesis.
A quarter of a living tree’s weight is carbon: this
remains locked safely away until the tree is either
burned or decomposes.
Trees are often described as creating ‘carbon sink’ –
this means that they remove more carbon from the
atmosphere than they put back through their own
respiration, decomposition and by forest fires. Forest
soils also store lots of carbon in their organic layers.
• Could plants help to slow the march of global warming?
• It's possible, suggests a new study, which finds that as climates
warm around the world, plants may respond by releasing
more aerosol particles into the atmosphere.
• The research, published online April 28 in the journal Nature
Geoscience, finds that these natural aerosols can fuel cloud
formation, which may help cool a warming climate
• Aerosols are fine particles of solid or liquid matter, suspended
in air. Most of the aerosol particles in Earth's atmosphere
come from human activities such as vehicle exhaust, according
to the environmental blog The Carbon Brief. Volcanic
eruptions also contribute some aerosols to the atmosphere.
• But a small percentage of atmospheric aerosols come from
living plants, 
• Plants release gases such as water vapor and
oxygen; these combine with the aerosols released
from plants to form larger airborne particles that
reflect sunlight and form cloud droplets.
• To measure the cooling effect, researchers
collected data from 11 sites around the world,
measuring aerosol particle concentrations, plant
gases and temperatures.
• In warmer temperatures, it was revealed, plants
emit more of the gases that stick to aerosol
particles. These can lead to cloud formation and,
as a result of cloud cover, cooler temperatures.
• Forests play an important an important role in
climate change. The destruction and degradation of
forests 
contributes to the problem through the release of CO
2
. But the planting of new forests can help mitigate
against climate change by removing CO2 from the
atmosphere. Combined with the sun's energy, the
captured carbon is converted into trunks, branches,
roots and leaves via the process of photosynthesis. It
is stored in this "biomass" until being returned back
into the atmosphere, whether through natural
processes or human interference, thus completing
the carbon cycle.
• Under certain conditions plantations can grow relatively
fast, thus absorbing CO2 at higher rates than natural
forests. In the absence of major disturbances, newly
planted or regenerating forests can continue to absorb
carbon for 20–50 years or more. In comparison to
preventing the loss of natural forests, however, tree
planting has the potential to make only a limited
contribution to reducing CO2 levels in the atmosphere. In
2000, a special report which concluded that tree-
planting could sequester (remove from the atmosphere)
around 1.1–1.6 GT of CO2 per year. That compares to
total global greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 50
GT of CO2 in 2004.
• Compare the 1.5 billion tons to the total CO2 emissions –
about 35 billion tons. That’s only about 4% – not
insignificant, but not a game changer either. (More on 
total global CO2 emissions from here).
• So, with current evidence, it appears that planting trees
and plants alone cannot make a dramatic difference in our
efforts to reduce global warming.
• If we can manage to do a good job of both increased
afforestation (planting trees) and decreased deforestation
(cutting trees), these together could start making
meaningful contributions to our climate change and global
warming efforts. The total CO2 emissions reductions from
both these together could inch towards 10% – which, while
still not a game changer, is not a bad number either.
• So: The “tree strategy” should be: Focus on both
afforestation AND deforestation.