Kaieteur » Carbon storage

New world record set for tree planting in the Philippines

Kaieteur Devon — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 23:58:24 +0000

The El Verde Project breaks a world record for tree planting.

Global reforestation efforts got an amazing boost when the El Verde Project in the Philippines started their 12 million trees by 2012 project by setting a new Guinness world record for planting the most trees simultaneously.

El Verde Tree planting world record volunteers

On February 23rd 2011 6893 volunteers gathered in the Philippine province of Camarines Sur to plant 64096 trees See confirmation on the Guinness world records website and the Guiness world records blog about the world record event Volunteers included President of Philippines Noynoy Aquino AKA Benigno Aquino III, Provincial Governor of Camarines Sur Luis Raymund Villafuerte, fire, police and hospital services, judges, politicians, businesses and thousands of other locals.

President of Phillippines Noynoy Aquino and Governor of Camarines Sur Luis Raymund Villafuerte El Verde

President of Philippines Noynoy Aquino AKA Benigno Aquino III plants a tree at the El Verde event

Provincial Governor of Camarines Sur Luis Raymund Villafuerte and volunteers plant trees for El Verde

Another YouTube video about El Verde event

And another video on YouTube about the El Verde event

Province of Camarines Sur is in the Philippines with a population of about 1 ½ million people See the Camarines Sur website and See the Wikipedia entry With such natural wonders as Mt. Isarog and an indigenous tribal people called the Agta, it is a beautiful place to visit.

Governor Villafuerte was happy to promote the benefits of tree planting. “The El Verde project combines biodiversity conservation, economic development and a climate change adaptation strategy to help reverse the rate of deforestation in the province.” “We want to teach our people the importance of saving the environment and how they can help as active stakeholders,” Villafuerte said.

The El Verde project has inspired families living in Camarines Sur to get involved in the planting and maintenance of the saplings in their early years. The families are partnered with an area of land with at least 2500 new trees planted and asked to nurture them. In return extra food is distributed to them, along with extra health and education benefits.

El Verde is inviting business and individual sponsorship to help address climate change through reforestation. Please help make a difference and get in touch with El Verde Contact details for El Verde

A Collection of photos showing the El Verde Tree Planting Volunteers

El Verde Tree planting world record volunteers

Photos from Boom Dayupay

More Reforestation efforts around the world.

The El Verde initiative blends in well with the United Nations acknowledged 2011 is the International Year of Forests Find out more about The International Year of Forests 2011

Another great reforestation initiative headed by Professor Wangari Maathai and HSH Albert II, Prince of Monaco is The Billion Tree Campaign that has facilitated a world changing 11 billion trees to be planted. Read more about The Billion Tree Campaign

The inspirational Boris Trajanov helped to initiate ‘Tree Day’ in Macedonia in August 2007 Macedonia Tree Day Since then the Macedonia people have planted over 20 million trees. Watch a video of Boris Trajanov talking about ‘Tree Day’

The world record for trees planted in 1 hour by 100 people or less is 26422 trees. That’s an average of 264 trees each person in one hour! See the Guinness World Records Website for Confirmation If half of the world’s population planted trees at the same rate for just 1 hour 883 billion trees would get planted.

“Planting and growing increasing quantities of trees is the scientific solution to Earth’s environmental dilemma.” Dr. Richard St. Barbe-Baker Watch Video Of Dr. Richard St. Barbe-Baker on YouTube HERE

Posted by Michael Horsnell
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How fungi – mushrooms – mycelium can help save the world

Kaieteur Devon — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 01:31:02 +0000

How fungi - mushrooms - mycelium can help save the world

Fungi or mushrooms are the fruiting body of the mycelium network.

Fungi decompose and absorb a huge variety of nutrients and elements. In doing so they produce fertile soil, naturally carry out the process of carbon capture and with there symbiotic relationships with many plants and trees also help lock even more carbon into the plant structure, by helping them grow quicker.

The mycelium spreads out through the soil and other organic materials to help breakdown and assimilate compounds. In fact mycelium grows into such an intricate network, left untouched by human intervention fungi can become the largest organisms on this planet.

Photo source – A beautiful picture of amethyst deceiver (Laccaria amethystea)

The complex network of mycelium often works symbiotically, sharing the micro nutrients it has produced with the trees and plants which have produced carbohydrates through photosynthesis (something fungi cannot achieve). Mycelium also shares symbiotic relationships with bacteria, sharing valuable chemicals.

TED

The guru of fungi, Paul Stamets presents this TED talk, putting forward excellent evidence of how valuable to the earth these organisms are.

Follow Paul Stamets on twitter here @PaulStamets

Paul Stamets website fungi.com

An interview with Paul Stamets by mother earth news

Trees grow on Mushrooms and natural carbon storage techniques

Chris Rhodes highlights an important fact in his blogpost March 22, 2009 ( which can be read here )

He points out that plants which have mycelium surrounding their root structure when young, establish and grow with better vigour because of their symbiotic relationship. The mycelium acts as an extension to the root system with obvious benefits.

So Tree saplings being prepared for reforestation projects would benefit enormously if the natural partnering fungi can be attached at an early stage. Leading to improved growth in the tree and therefore storage of carbon, whilst the mycelium itself helps to lock up huge amounts of carbon in the soil.

Chris has also summarised some of Paul Stamets work in this blog post

Carbon Storage

The Department of Ecology at Lund University, Sweden has a project looking at how mycelium helps store carbon in the soil. This highlights the many benefits of leaving naturally formed soil structure wherever possible. Details of the project can be viewed here.

Mycoremediation

Mycelium plays a huge part in the cleaning up of pollutants we produce in our modern lives. The process is often called Mycoremediation. Mycelium with symbiotic relationships with bacteria can break down substances which can be toxic if left unchecked.

This is an excellent description of how fungi can create fertile soils.

Examples of Mycoremediation in the Amazon.

video clip – A Solution to Pollution – Mycoremediation in the Ecuadorian Amazon

A definition of Mycoremediation from www.celsias.com

‘Many species of mushrooms are actually powerful bioremediators, natural organisms that help break down pollutants. They colonize contaminated soil, and then secrete enzymes that break down the offending chemicals into nontoxic components. The result is clean soil and lots of mushrooms.’

London Olympic 2012 have been using bioremediation processes to clean land. See this link.

‘The bacteria, fungi and other microbes will completely clean this soil without any waste being taken to landfill as part of the green, high-tech clean up of the Olympic Park.’

To buy the best book on fungi look no further than the kaieteur web site

Or for a free preview see it here on google. Page 82

Help plant trees, please donate to the kaieteur tree planting fund

To find out more about fungi from the BBC breathing places have a look here

Posted by Michael Horsnell

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