In five years, you might have a completely closed canopy thats 20 feet high.
I have walked in rainforests 80 feet high that are 10 to 15 years old.
It just blows your mind.
Aerial photo of logging in Malaysian rainforest.Image: Rich Carey/Shutterstock
That sort of regrowth isnt a given, though.
Cows, of course, also tend to nosh on young plants.
Secondly, it helps for tropical soil to have a high carbon content to nourish plants.
We found that places with soils like that are much more likely to have forests pop up.
And its also beneficial for a degraded area to be near a standing tropical forest.
That way, birds can fly across the area, pooping out seeds they have eaten in the forest.
The more biodiversity, the more a forest can withstand shocks.
If one species disappears because of disease, for instance, another similar one might fill the void.
One community, for instance, might rely on a crop that requires open spaces to grow.
But these are just the forests in tropical regions.
Protecting temperate forests and sea grasses would capture still more carbon, in addition to newfangled techniques likegrowing cyanobacteria.
This is one tool in a toolbox it is not a silver bullet, Fagan said.
Its one of 40 bullets needed to fight climate change.
But we need to use all available options.
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