A small village in Spain celebrated the first Arbor Day in the world during the early 1800s and it’s evolved to be a tradition to celebrate Arbor Day on the last Friday of April every since. This year, Arbor Day will fall upon on April 24th and in honor of this holiday, I wanted to explore just how important trees are to humanity.
It is common knowledge that trees produce oxygen in exchange for the carbon dioxide that we breathe out. What’s less known is that trees act as air filters and reduces air pollution by removing pollutants like sulfur and nitrogen dioxide and furthermore, tree roots filter the sewage and farm chemicals and convert toxic materials to less toxic ones. In addition to their filtering capabilities, tree roots are also an important factor in preventing soil erosion and other types of runoff. Although it is sad to see trees cut down, it is also important to point out that lumber is a source of energy and other production materials that people rely on.
The importance of trees is often neglected because we take them for granted every day so a thought exercise to consider is what if we had a world without trees? Air pollution as been a rising problem for many cities around the globe so in a world without trees, we can expect an exacerbation of the issue. We can make the argument that with poor air quality, more people around the world have a greater susceptibility to respiratory related illness and it would be interesting to explore other public health related consequences of the reduction in trees. We can also argue that without trees, our productivity would decrease due to our high dependency on wood products either solidly made from wood or is derived from wood chemicals. As it would take time to find substitutes for these products, we wouldn’t be able to build or make as much as we are now.
So for Arbor Day, take some time to reflect on the importance of trees and maybe even plant your own.
Written by Linda Shackles, Class of 2017