Climate change and global warming are two of the most talked about issues in the world right now. The effects are slowly getting blatant on the environment: more animals die due to change of weather, more glaciers are now shrinking, trees are blossoming sooner than expected, loss of a greater volume of ice even in the Arctic and Antarctica, the rise of sea level, and the hotter temperature.
Due to the risks that this phenomenon can pose to our environment and planet, experts are already working so hard to end the problem, as explained by NASA. One of these experts is Dr. Erika Berenguer, a scientist of Oxford Environmental Change Institute who considered the Amazon rainforest her laboratory.
By studying the same patch of trees for nearly about a decade now, the scientist learned how the trees in Amazon could help mankind fight climate change. "The Amazon stores so much carbon that it's helping us fight climate change," says Berenguer.
The scientist further explained how these trees do their part in clearing the greenhouse gases in the air by saying, "So what's it's doing is that it's keeping the carbon on the ground, on the forest, and it's not in the atmosphere," Berenguer added. The bigger and older the trees are, the more carbon it stores in its trunk for the environment, as reported by BBC.
As explained by science, one of the things needed by trees to make its food and survive is carbon dioxide. This carbon dioxide, which is considered as the main contributor to climate change and global warming, is inhaled through the trees' leaves. With other nutrients, water, and energy that comes from the sun, carbon dioxide will undergo a process called photosynthesis, which in turn will create glucose the plant needs to survive.
Berenguer further claims through her study; a single tree can hold as much as four tons of carbon, which shows how these creations are worth it and valuable especially when helping the environment survive amid climate change and global warming. She was able to discover this after examining wood from the forest and dried it up inside a big oven, with the goal of removing the moisture in the twigs completely.
Three days later, she will then weigh the twigs to determine the carbon content of it. According to the expert, half of the weight of it is its carbon content.
With how the Amazon forest is in helping the earth, Berenguer hopes more people will be able to see its importance and have the desire to take care of it. "A place like this is so wonderful, it's so full of life, it's just so beautiful, and to lose it, it's never going to come back again," the scientist concluded.
