Are you passionate about planting and growing trees, and increasing our canopy cover? Does improving the quality of our air, water, and ecosystems inspire you? Are you interested in cooling down your home, property or suburb? If you can answer yes to one or more of these crucial questions, then the best thing you can do is to plant more trees.
Australia's declining canopy cover
From 2001 to 2020, Australia lost 8.47Mha of tree cover, equivalent to a 20% decrease in tree cover since 2000 and 1.86Gt of CO₂ emissions. The 2019 – 2020 Australian bushfires burned approximately 17 million hectares of land, including significant portions of the World Heritage Listed Greater Blue Mountains area and the Gondwana Rainforests1. That's a lot of trees up in smoke.
Chart source: Global Forest Watch - Australia
Urban areas are subject to the Urban Heat Island Effect. In this phenomenon, localised warming occurs due to the large amounts of paved and dark coloured surfaces absorbing and retaining the sun's heat and acting like large heat sinks. Urban environments can be several degrees hotter than country environments, simply due to the lower proportion of green spaces with trees and vegetation2. I'm sweating already!
Planting more trees is crucial
As the old Chinese proverb says, "The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is now." Besides cooling our urban centres, it's general knowledge that trees provide oxygen, process carbon dioxide, provide food and shelter for wildlife, minimize erosion and maintain healthy soil3. And they look good too; who doesn't like sitting under the shelter of a stately Gum tree or playing in a park that is lush, green and cool? Numerous studies have demonstrated that the presence of trees and urban nature can improve people's mental and physical health, children's attention and test scores, property values in a neighbourhood, and beyond4.
These statements point to one logical thought; planting more trees is of utmost importance and of great benefit, no matter how we look at it.
Helping your tree planting projects succeed
Arborgreen is passionate about planting trees, and we support our customers' tree planting projects from beginning to end. It's one of the reasons we've decided to publish an ongoing blog to:
- provide you with information on the best practices for tree planting
- share examples of interesting tree planting projects
- collate resources to help you make informed decisions
- update you on innovative tree planting solutions
- make your tree planting project a success
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Photo courtesy: Bio-R
Revegetation blog series
We're excited to kick off our first blog series on revegetation in the coming weeks. The series will consist of ten short, informative posts which will walk through each step of a revegetation project, from start to finish. The topics we'll cover in this series include:
- Revegetation Site Assessment: What do you want to achieve?
- Bush Regeneration: Building on existing foundations
- Planning your Revegetation Project: Part 1 - Plant Selection, Weed Control and Planting & Seeding
- Planning your Revegetation Project: Part 2 - Fertilisation, Tree Protection and Ongoing Site Maintenance
- Plant Selection: Learn from history to improve the future
- Weed control in revegetation: Competition isn't always healthy
- Planting and Seeding: From small things, big things grow
- Revegetation Fertilisation: Healthy plants require healthy soils
- Revegetation Tree Protection: Guarding your garden
- Where do my tree guards end up? Environmental side-effects of revegetation
- Don't set and forget (post coming soon - subscribe to be notified)
We'll even sneak in a few individual blog posts showcasing some exceptional examples of successful tree planting projects.
Come on this journey with us, grab a coffee (in an environmentally responsible, reusable mug) and sit down for an informative read. We're sure you'll find the content helpful and enjoy it as much as we enjoyed putting it together for you! Subscribe via the link in the footer to receive new blog post notifications.
References
1Australian Bushfires
2How can nature help tackle the urban heat island effect
3Why are trees important to the environment
4The benefits of trees for livable and sustainable communities
