Our green friends

Our green friends

Trees and plants greatly influence our lives. Did you know that our green forests are big factories producing oxygen? We need this product for our survival.  Forests are greenhouse exchangers and work hard to clean our air by absorbing carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen.  How they do it? Trees lock in carbon dioxide and return it to the soil when they decompose instead of releasing it into the air and contributing to pollution. Want to know more about our green saviors? Here are 16 interesting facts: 

  • One large growing tree can provide a day’s oxygen for four people.
  • By taking in the amount of carbon we release into the atmosphere, trees help us to reduce the “greenhouse” effect and remove the “carbon debt” we put into the environment.
  • To grow a  pound of wood, a tree uses 1.47 pounds of carbon dioxide and gives off 1.07 pounds of oxygen. 
  • Each year the forestry community plants 11/2 billion tree seedlings in North America only. It means more than six new trees for each North America.
  • Twenty-seven percent of the world’s total land area is covered in forests, which are home to more species of animals, birds, plants, and insects than any other environment on Earth.
  • In federal reserves and national parks, the United States and Canadian governments have the largest area of protected forests in the world–greater than Russia, Germany, Sweden, Finland, Brazil, and the United Kingdom combined.
  • Canada has nearly 86.5 million acres of protected forests, the largest protected area in the world.
  • In the United States alone forests cover 747 million acres (301 million hectares) or 33 percent of the land base.
  • Satellite surveys confirm that across North America forests have actually expanded by 20 percent since 1970.
  • North America’s forests are abundant and growing. The forests in the United States and Canada make 15 percent of the Earth’s forest cover.
  • According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service, forest planting in the United States currently averages about one million hectares a year.
  • The average North American uses 18 cubic feet (1/2 cubic meter of wood) and 749 pounds (340 kilograms) of paper per year, equal to a 100-foot (30 meter) tree.
  • More than 5,000 products are made from trees: houses, fences, furniture, baseball bats, books, newspapers, tires, cellophane, fabric rayon, and explosives.
  • Wood fiber derived from the trees and called cellulose is one of ingredients in production of ice cream, toothpaste, and shampoo.

Do you know what is the single oldest living tree on Earth? This tree is a twisted bristle-cone pine named “Methuselah.” It grows in the White Mountains of California. It is 4,723 years old. There are other pines in the area that are nearly as old.  It is so amazing that these trees have been growing since the time when Egyptians were building the Pyramids!

Mother Nature created another miracle in the sunny California, the tallest tree in the world. It is  367.5 foot (112 meters) redwood in Montgomery Woods State Preserve in northern California. This giant tree is 63.5 feet (19.4 meters) taller that the Statue of Liberty and over twice as high as Niagara Falls.

Copyright 2008 All rights reserved.

Source: Research an essential foundation: chapter 14 — Outdoor Recreation in America Parks and Recreation, 2002