Over the years, we have been committed to planting trees and hope to make the earth greener. If the earth becomes greener by planting trees, it is very useful for the earth's environment. Because these green plants can perform photosynthesis , absorb carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and reduce the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. satellite found that the earth is indeed turning green, and the reasons are in China and India, but scientists are very worried about India. What's going on?
The Earth is turning green
The journal Nature Sustainable Development once published a research paper titled "China and India contribute to greening the Earth through land use management". After 20 years of observation, the data collected by NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites show that the Earth is greener than 20 years ago, and since 2000, the Earth's green leaf area has increased by 5%. Looking at this proportion value, we may not know how much the green leaf area of the earth has increased over the years. In other words, we will be more intuitive. Increased green leaf area by 5% is equivalent to adding an Amazon rainforest. Among them, China and India have made the most contribution to global greening, and our two countries have contributed one-third of their growth in this regard.
In the 1990s, Langa Minneni, professor at at Boston University and his colleagues had already begun to notice the phenomenon of the earth's greening in NASA's satellite data. At first, they thought that the earth's climate was warmer, the earth became more humid, and the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere led to the increase in the earth's green vegetation area, but later they found that humans actually contributed in this regard. They began to track the earth's forest coverage area and changes. Satellite data from 2000 to 2017 showed that the green area in China and India changed very largely and very eye-catching. Among them, in the past 10 years, about a quarter of the newly added green area on the earth came from China, and our contribution rate ranks first in the world in this regard.
Meneni said that satellite discovery of China and India leading the global greening, which shows that human activities can directly affect the global vegetation area, help scientists better predict the future activities of the earth and better guide us to make smarter decisions when solving climate warming and environmental pollution.
In addition to NASA's satellite discovery that the earth is turning green, Xinhua News Agency has also produced 4 episodes of "Satellite Look at China", showing us "China's Contributions to Reduce Carbon and Energy Saving". From the dynamic picture, we can see very intuitively that the green area in China is changing year by year, and the green area is getting bigger and bigger. This is the result of our vigorous promotion of afforestation over the years.
is very worried about India
Logically speaking, China and India have contributed nearly one-third of the growth in greening, which should be really praised and have made indelible contributions, but scientists are deeply concerned about the situation in India. What's going on?
That's the thing. Although the green area around the world is increasing and the earth is becoming greener than 20 years ago, these newly added green areas are not all the result of afforestation, but also include green areas such as agricultural land. Among the newly added green area in China, the proportion of new agricultural land is about 32%, and the proportion of new forest area reaches 42%. In comparison, among the newly added green area in India, the proportion of new agricultural land is as high as 82%, while the proportion of new forest area is only 4.4%. Judging from these data, more than 40% of our new green area in China comes from forest area, while the proportion of forest area in India accounts for a very low proportion.
Although green areas such as agricultural land, forests, grasslands, etc. can make the earth greener, the effect is completely different. Taking India's situation as an example, more than four-fifths of India's new green area are agricultural land, which may have a great impact on India's environment.Because agricultural planting is seasonal, and agricultural land requires a large amount of water, India has been continuously developing land as agricultural land over the years. Although it can solve the problem of food, it will consume a lot of groundwater in this process, which may also lead to a large amount of soil degradation. At that time, these newly added agricultural land may be abandoned by India. If green plants grow again in the abandoned land, this is still good. There is a relatively bad situation that may occur in desertification, desertification and other situations. Therefore, India's green area is indeed increasing at this stage, but it may not increase but decrease in the future. This is what makes people worry about.
Amazon rainforest or grasslandization?
Although the earth has become greener now, the ecosystems in many areas of the earth are actually not optimistic. In addition to the worrying situation in India, the environmental damage of the Amazon rainforest is also quite serious. Even the survival conditions of many tropical rainforests have reached the critical point, and it is very likely that they will never be able to recover.
A study shows that Amazon rainforests are indeed facing the critical point of survival. 90% of the deforestation and degradation of tropical rainforests are concentrated in Brazil and Bolivia . The tropical rainforests in these two countries have even shown signs of "grasslandization", that is, some tropical rainforests in these two countries have shown signs of degradation from tropical rainforests to grasslands. If these tropical rainforests really degenerate and turn into grasslands, it will be a fatal "strike" to the earth's environment, and the trend of climate warming will become irreversible.
Amazon rainforest is the largest existing tropical rainforest on the earth, with an area of about twice that of India. The oxygen released by this tropical rainforest accounts for 20% of the world's total oxygen, and plays a very important role in the earth's climate regulation. Therefore, the Amazon rainforest is called the "lung of the earth". Because these tropical rainforests have very abundant vegetation and are huge carbon dioxide sedimentation pools, data from WWF (WWF ) shows that Amazon rainforests store up to 90 billion to 140 billion tons of carbon dioxide.
If these tropical rainforests are burned out, this will not only cause the earth's vegetation to absorb carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and produce oxygen to reduce its ability to absorb carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but will also release the carbon dioxide that has been precipitated before. Therefore, WWF believes that if the Amazon rainforest is completely destroyed, the result will be devastating.
