The importance of a tree

The importance of a tree

It's not just a thing you climb with your bare hands—it's the atmosphere you breathe.

A tree absorbs about a ton of carbon dioxide and produces 4,000 pounds of oxygen per year. The canopy can also clean the air by removing pollutants, even in urban environments where lots of pollution is created by cars. (Is it any wonder that trees are often found on highways?)

Trees also provide shelter and food for animals. Without them, there wouldn't be nearly as many birds or squirrels, and they would have a hard time nesting.

What's more, trees are also a valuable source of lumber. While this is largely used to build things like houses, it can also be used to make furniture, ships and boats, and other items.

Trees are among the most important, and most overlooked, aspects of any landscape design. From shade to structure, trees have so much to offer!

Consider this: if you have a house with a large yard and no trees, what's the first thing you're going to do? Plant one, right?

That's because nothing can add quite as much value to your landscape or your curb appeal as a well-placed tree.

Perhaps that's why the average cost of tree removal was $871 in 2016, while the average cost of planting a tree was $180. In this case, 2+2=4: it is physically more expensive to remove a tree than it is to plant one. The only reason you'd be spending more money on removing than planting would be because you know how valuable those trees are.

Businesses and governments across the globe are beginning to realize that trees and forests are essential to the health of our planet. A recent study from Yale University showed that planting trees is one of the most effective ways to combat climate change.

According to the study, if we planted 1.2 trillion trees around the world, we could absorb about two-thirds of all carbon emissions humans have produced since the Industrial Revolution.

"We all knew that restoring forests could play a part in tackling climate change, but we had no scientific understanding of what impact this could achieve at a global level until now," said Thomas Crowther, a professor at ETH Zurich who helped lead the research. "Now we have a clear picture of how much land would be required and what impact this would have."

The study found that refugees can be some of our greatest allies in reforesting our planet. Many refugees have strong ties to their home countries and are intimately familiar with their ecosystems, which means they can help us grow new forests on pristine lands while also preserving local biodiversity and cultural heritage.