The Big Plant

Planting trees is one of the greatest solutions to environmental issues across the world. As most are commonly aware of, trees capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and convert it to breathable oxygen for the global population of humans and animals. However, trees have more to offer than just being the planet's lungs. Tree roots hold soil in place to prevent and help control soil erosion, preventing mudslides, dust storms, and sedimentation in water ways. Trees are also one of the many solutions to the greatest environmental crisis of the millennium, climate change. Trees can drastically lower the most abundant green house gas in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide. According to Tom Crowther, a climate change ecologist at Swiss University ETH Zurich, planting 1.2 trillion trees can have a profound effect on absorbing atmospheric carbon and begin to reverse climate change. 

Deforestation is a major component driving climate change and other environmental changes, like flooding. Since 1990, Earth has lost the equivalent of 1,000 football fields of forests every hour. At the start of the 20th century, Earth's forested area was 50 million square kilometers. Since then, Earth has lost 10 million square kilometers of forest area. 

The Big Plant 2019 planted 6,000 native, non-native, and non-invasive trees in the New River Valley, Virginia. The Big Plant 2020 planted 12,000 trees in the New River Valley, specifically along Stroubles Creek. In 2021, we planted 7,000 trees along Stroubles Creek! Stroubles Creek has been a federally designated impaired waterway since 2003, and The Big Plant is turning that around one tree at a time. It may only be thousands of trees planted each year, but slowly and surely, they will add up to a substantial number rivaling ecological crisis.