Why Are Green Plants Important to the Environment?
Green plants are not just important to the human environment, they form the basis for long-term health of environmental systems. Green plants remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and generate oxygen required for life. Green plants also are a good source of food and protection.
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Photosynthesis
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Photosynthesis is the process that green plants use to convert light into chemical energy, in the form of sugars, for growth. The green color in plants is caused by a chemical called chlorophyll. Chlorophyll absorbs the energy in red and blue light, but reflects green light, making green plants appear green. Photosynthesis consumes carbon dioxide as part of the process of photosynthesis and emits oxygen as a byproduct.
Oxygen
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An important byproduct of photosynthesis is oxygen. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, a plant leaf produces 5 ml of oxygen in an hour. A plant with 30 leaves would, therefore, produce 150 ml of oxygen in an hour or 3.6 liters of oxygen in a day.
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Carbon Dioxide
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Plants use carbon dioxide as part of photosynthesis, thereby removing it from the atmosphere. The World Bank estimates that 20 percent of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels is a result of deforestation. They estimate that as much as 50 percent of global warming over the past 50 years is a result of changing land use patterns and deforestation in the modern age. A single tree is estimated to absorb 1.33 tons of carbon dioxide per 100 years, or an average or just over 26 pounds of carbon dioxide per year.
Natural Cooling
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Green plants can provide natural cooling for an area. Trees block the heating effect of the sun. Green plants can also cool an area through transpiration, although without a large number of trees and green plants this effect is minimal. Transpiration is the process by which water evaporates from plant pores, cooling the environment via evaporative cooling. Evaporation consumes heat and is most effective for cooling when the humidity is low.
Food
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Green plants are essential to food chains. Various animals, birds, insects and microbes feed on the green plants and are subsequently eaten by larger animals, which are themselves subsequently eaten by even larger animals. For example, a rabbit eats grasses. The rabbit is eaten by a fox, which may be subsequently eaten by a mountain lion. Another example is cows: Grasses are eaten by cows, and cows are a major food source for people.
Protection
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Green plants, especially trees, provide cover and shelter for many animals and plants. A tree may provide adequate shade for smaller plants underneath. The same tree may provide an ideal place for a bird to build a nest. The Dust Bowl of the 1930s was caused by farmers removing protective trees. The removal of the trees, combined with a severe drought, allowed wind to remove the topsoil of many farms, and thus caused severe crop damage. One solution to the problem was to plant rows of trees around fields under cultivation to block the wind.
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- Photo Credit Photo: S. P. Veres, stock.xchng
