If We Lose a Forest, What Do We Lose? 12 Benefits of Forests … Just for Starters …
A forest is a sponge, a heat bank, a wind break, a filter, a cooler, a humidifier, an air pump and a habitat. How does this work? And why should we care?
If we lose a forest, what do we lose? And how does this relate to the water cycle?
As explained in yesterday’s article Water: The Untold Story. Evaporating Water Has the Power to Cool Its Surroundings … forests nurture every aspect of the water cycle, including evaporation, condensation, cloud formation and precipitation. Let’s look at each of these items in some detail, and then we will look at what the forest BECOMES in its environment.
Evaporation. Plants and trees and especially old growth forests cause the evaporation of prodigious amounts of water. This evaporated water provides the raw material for future rainfalls. Without the forest, this evaporation does not occur. You need plants and trees and especially mature forests to provide the raw materials for future rainfalls. When you remove the forest, you remove the supply of water vapor for future rainfalls.
Condensation. When plants and trees emit water vapor, they also emit condensation nuclei, in the form of bacteria and certain organic compounds. These nuclei make condensation possible.
Cloud formation. The condensation mentioned above makes cloud formation possible. Clouds make rain. No clouds, no rain. Many if not most of our clouds are made possible by forests.
Precipitation. Forests create a cool, moist environment that makes it more likely that a raindrop will reach the ground, in contrast to hot, dry environments that often evaporate the raindrop before it reaches the ground.
So that’s how forests nurture every step of the water cycle, from evaporation, to condensation, to cloud formation, to precipitation.
Now let’s talk about what a forest BECOMES in its environment, because of its interaction with water.
The forest becomes a Sponge, a Heat Bank, a Wind Break, a Filter, a Cooler, a Humidifier, and an Air Pump and a Habitat.
The Sponge. A forest is a sponge for rainfall. When the rain falls, the leaves of the tree capture the rain, because the rain clings to the leaves. In the fall, the leaves fall onto the ground, forming a layer of leaf littler. This layer of leaf litter captures the rainfall, causing it to gently soak into the ground instead of running off.
Not least of all, the roots of the trees nurture the soil, because nothing forms great soil better than plant roots and tree roots. Plants and trees take carbon out of the atmosphere, use that carbon to form sugars and then exude about ⅓ of these sugars out through the roots, thereby jump starting the soil food web. The soil food web virtually defines healthy soil. The soil thereby forms organic matter that soaks up rainfall like a sponge.
The Heat Bank. The forest is a water-rich environment. Trees are about half water, by volume. Leaf litter and dead wood hold a lot of water. The soil in a healthy forest holds a lot of water. So a forest has a great deal more water than the alternative, i.e., a deforested area.
Because a forest is a water-rich environment, it holds a lot of heat. Water, as a substance, is slower to warm up than the surrounding air, and slower to cool down than the surrounding air. So when the surrounding air is experiencing peaks and valleys, the forest is a force for moderation, moderating temperatures, so it doesn’t get as hot or as cold as the surrounding air.
Therefore, if we want to avoid extremes of hot and cold, we will want to have as much forest as possible, and avoid deforestation.
The Wind Break. A forest stands in the way of strong, damaging winds. Yet again, it is a force for moderation. Insofar as climate change brings extreme weather, we should want forests to temper the extremes.
The Filter. Just as the forest serves as a sponge and soaks up rainfall, it slows down the progress of water into the waterways. When water has to go from a tree leaf, into the leaf litter, into the soil, into the moist environment of the forest before evaporating, condensing and falling again as rain, this raindrop will be cleaner than the one that went rushing directly into a storm drain.
Thus, the forest acts as a filter, by slowing down the water.
The Cooler. Because the forest evaporates so much water, it acts as a cooler, because evaporating water cools its surroundings. It takes upwards of 550 kilocalories to evaporate a liter of water. Each medium to full-sized tree evaporates many liters of water per day. That’s a big part of the reason a forest feels cool.
When we lose the forest, we are losing a solar powered air conditioner. It seems we should want as many solar powered air conditioners as we can get, if global warming is an issue. That’s why some of us think that increasing the plant cover on the ground worldwide is JOB ONE, not a sideshow.
The Humidifier. Because the forest exudes so much water from the leaves of trees and plants, it becomes a humidifier, creating a cool, moist environment that prevents soil and multitudinous organisms from drying out. Thus, the trees create an environment in which they can thrive, partly by nurturing the environment in which myriad other plants, animals, fungi and microbes might thrive.
It is said that intelligence is the ability of a species to nurture the environment on which it depends. By this principle the species of a forest create an environment in which all species might thrive.
The Air Pump. When water boils or evaporates, it expands by a factor of 1,000 or more. And when it condenses, it contracts by a factor of 1,000 or more. When it contracts, it creates a vacuum. This vacuum creates “negative pressure” that pulls air inward toward the forest. This is called the Biotic Pump, a theory pioneered by Anastassia Makarieva and Victor Gorshkov.
For simplicity and clarity, I call this the “Air Pump.” The forest compels air to move inward toward the forest. It’s a cycle of condensation, pumping, condensation, pumping, etc. It is a virtuous cycle.
When we lose the forest, we lose the functioning Air Pump. This is especially true when we lose mature or old growth forests. This is yet another reason we should seek to protect them.
In addition to all these functions, we have the value of the forest as a Habitat.
The Habitat, or The Home. The forest is The Habitat or The Home for countless species of plants, animals, fungi and microbes. Every one of these has a life that is as valuable to them as your life is to you or mine is to me. The lives of these organisms are what makes our planet unique in the universe. We should value these lives for their own sake and not require that they be useful to humans.
My goal is to raise awareness as to what we lose when we lose a forest, and what we will keep if we protect the forest.
I recommend this video by Jimi Eisenstein.
I recommend the book “Water In Plain Sight,” by Judith D. Schwartz.
I recommend the book “Climate: A New Story” by Charles Eisenstein.
I recommend “The Nature of Oaks” by Douglas . W. Tallamy.
If you wish to participate in my communication course, Practice Your Pitch, please reply and let me know. This is for anyone who seeks to protect and promote our ecosystems by optimizing their communication skills.