Reforestation means more than just planting trees

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https://www.science.org/content/article/reforestation-means-just-planting-trees

By Elizabeth Pennisi, Science Magazine. 

Excerpt: The world is set to get a lot greener over the next 10 years. The United Nations has designated 2021–30 the Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, and many countries, with help from donors, have launched ambitious programs to restore forests in places where they were chopped down or degraded. At the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Egypt last week, the European Union and 26 nations pledged $16 billion in support of forests, banking on trees’ ability to slow climate change by storing carbon. A significant chunk will be spent on reforestation. ...Between 2000 and 2020, the amount of forest increased by 1.3 million square kilometers, an area larger than Peru, according to the World Resources Institute, with China and India leading the way. But about 45% of those new forests are plantations, dense aggregations dominated by a single species that are less beneficial for biodiversity and long-term carbon storage than natural forests. Many reforestation projects focus on the number of trees planted, with less attention to how well they survive, how diverse the resulting forests are, or how much carbon they store. ...A theme issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society published last week offers guidance, in the form of 20 articles—both original research and reviews. One in-depth look at reforestation projects in South and Southeast Asia details the challenge. ...The study did offer one encouraging hint: When seedlings were planted near mature trees, an average of 64% survived, possibly because those spots were not as degraded. Other research has shown that measures such as fencing out cattle and improving soil conditions can boost saplings’ chances of survival as well, but they can be costly....

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