A plethora of studies suggests that tree plantations, including reforestation (planting trees on the land that was forested historically) and afforestation (planting trees on the land that was not forested historically; Dooley et al., 2021), can overcome a host of environmental problems, including climate change, soil erosion, water shortage and the sixth mass extinction (Bastin et al., 2019; Griscom et al., 2017; Newmark et al., 2017). However, the scientific community has strongly criticized the massive tree plantation programs, owing to negative ecological and economic impacts, a limited role in adaptation to climate change and CO2 mitigation, and threats to above- and belowground biodiversity in treeless ecosystems (Baldocchi & Penuelas, 2019; Bond et al., 2019; Gómez-González et al., 2020; Holl & Brancalion, 2020; Jiang et al., 2020; Susana et al., 2020; Veldman et al., 2019; Zeng et al., 2020). The 1 trillion tree initiative (https://www.1t.org/) and the European Union Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 (European Commission, 2020) are aiming to plant forests to increase biodiversity and enhance the resilience to natural disasters and pandemics. Therefore, improving our knowledge of multitrophic changes resulting from tree plantations is crucial and urgently needed to evaluate the benefits of tree-planting programmes as an method of ecological restoration in the near future.
A global meta-analysis of the impacts of tree plantations on biodiversity
Year: 2021
