• Question: could you die if there were no trees in the world ????

    Asked by coraline to Jen, Jill, Mel, Phil, Stef on 16 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: Jennifer Paxton

      Jennifer Paxton answered on 16 Mar 2013:

      Eh… probably yeah, at least eventually!

      Trees are very important to us because they use up the excess carbon dioxide in the air and transfer it into energy. Then they give oxygen back out into the air for us to breathe. So if we had no trees there would be more carbon dioxide and less oxygen in the air and that wouldnt be good for us! The air would be very dirty and full of other pollutants too – yuck! We wouldn’t survive long without trees!

      What else would we not have if we had no trees?…..I found this list of stuff so I thought I’d paste it here – it’s amazing all the stuff that comes from trees!!

      paper, baseball bats, barrels, books, blocks, benches, crutches, coffee filters, guitars, grocery bags, pencils, pine oil, beds, billboards, buttons, fuelwood, charcoal, industrial roundwood, sweet wrappers,chewing gum, cork, crayons, spices, egg cartons, kites, linoleum, luggage, paper, pingpong balls, wooden chopsticks, rubber, tambourines, telephone books, tires, bark, fiber, dyes, incense, latexes, oils, resins, shellac, tanning compounds, waxes, toilet paper, turpentine, xylophones or wooden yo-yos. We wouldn’t have food that grows on trees either – like fruits, nuts and berries!

    • Photo: Stefan Piatek

      Stefan Piatek answered on 16 Mar 2013:

      Hmm, it would probably make life pretty impossible for us, but I don’t think for the reasons that you’d expect!

      Half or more of our oxygen comes from algae in the sea and fresh water, so we *might* be able to survive without trees for oxygen. If we assume that they all just disappeared magically one day so we won’t have a huge amount of excess carbon dioxide there would be another big problem. Trees roots hold the soil together and their leaves dropping add nutrients back to the land. Without these, the soil that has the nutrients washes away because there aren’t the big roots from trees anchoring the soil. Another important thing is that the trees breathing and undergoing photosynthesis causes water vapour to be released and that forms rain which then makes rivers.

      Easter island had all it’s trees removed and the land stopped having rivers, all of the good soil washed away and they couldn’t grow any food! http://www.mongabay.com/09easter_island.htm It shows just how serious deforestation is!

    • Photo: Phil Rice

      Phil Rice answered on 19 Mar 2013:

      Essentially I think the answer is yes. They act as the lungs of the world but even if one accepts that half the oxygen comes from algae in sea water, that would reduce the % of O2 in air to c. 10%. That would make for very hard work for all of us to breathe.

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