Experts say that the forests of China are beginning to make a comeback after suffering from a long period of decline. In this new report, tree growth in the woodlands are thriving, however, this comes at a price where other Asian nations becomes at risk.
China has been barren for decades due to logging, leaving woodland regions unrecognizable. To offset this major decline in trees, the Beijing government carried out a massive nationwide reforestation program to restore the country's forests and woodlands. This extensive effort is now being commended worldwide by some environmentalists, which can be applied as well in other countries suffering from the same forest crisis.
In this new study, researchers from the Michigan State University collected and compared images obtained from Google Earth and crucial data from a NASA study in order to monitor tree growth across China. The results revealed that there are significant gains and changes of tree coverage spanning 61,000 square miles that is equal to 1.6 percent of the forest and woodland regions of the whole country. From a loss of 14,400 square miles or 0.38 percent of these forested regions, the growth of these trees occurred between 2000 to 2010.
According to Andrés Viña of Michigan State University's Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability, these results are truly positive for China, and when China is viewed from an isolated point, the program works effectively when it comes to carbon sequestration that is in line with the nation's climate change mitigation goals. However, this does not mean that China is a vacuum.
To supply China's still growing demand for wood products, nations such as Madagascar, Vietnam and Indonesia are still cutting down a massive amount of their own forests for the Chinese market. According to researchers, even if China may have alleviated their deforestation problem and even absorbing more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, environmentalists suggest that these problems are just transferred to other countries, where production of greenhouse gases are increased.
From China, worldwide markets still purchase vast amounts of wood products from the nation and since the demand is still great, wood are being imported and exported between Chinese borders. Scientists say that any gains that China may have been observed in their environment is just a direct result from degrading woodlands in other parts of the world.
Additional research will further investigate how Beijing carries out environmental policies that have been crucial for their forest restoration. Scientists believe that the results of this new study can be beneficial to other nations where these efforts can be applied in their own home countries.
This new study is published in the journal Science Advances.