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CLIMATE SCIENCES

Planting trees to combat drought

Nature Geoscience volume 14, pages 458–459 (2021)Cite this article

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Reforestation of agricultural lands in Europe increases local and downwind summer rainfall, according to a new analysis of rain-gauge measurements from across the continent. Realistic levels of tree planting could therefore mitigate future droughts expected with climate change.

For millennia humans have moulded the Earth’s surface to their will, clearing forests to grow crops and raise livestock. Pollen records suggest that the area covered by forest in Europe has halved in the past six thousand years1. Meanwhile, over the last century forest cover in Europe has been rising through a combination of encroachment — when previously managed areas of farmland are left to grow wild — and purposeful tree planting2. These landscape-scale changes influence rainfall patterns by altering the flow of water and energy between the land and the atmosphere. Writing in Nature Geoscience, Meier and colleagues3 analyse a network of rain gauges across Europe to determine how increasing forest cover might affect rainfall in the future. Using a statistical model, they show that a ‘realistic’ forestation scenario, which considers food security and other crucial safeguards, could potentially offset summertime reductions in rainfall caused by climate change.

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Fig. 1: Rainfall over a European forest.

Peter Zelei Images/Moment/Getty

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  1. School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

    Jessica C. A. Baker

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  1. Jessica C. A. Baker
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Correspondence to Jessica C. A. Baker.

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Baker, J.C.A. Planting trees to combat drought. Nat. Geosci. 14, 458–459 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-021-00787-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-021-00787-0

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