Save trees. Trees save

Got this photo plus a very instructive quote: "Save trees. Trees save". As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words".



See that boy clinging to the lonely tree. The tree saved his life. However, I suspect he would not even be subjected to this terrible ordeal had the forests upstream not been indiscrimatedly cut down as then it is not likely this place would have been flooded.

If this does not make sense to you immediately, let me explain. When you have forest cover, during heavy rainfall, the rain drops get caught in the leaves of the trees and it takes time for them to drip down to the forest floor. Because of this time delay, the rain water have time to seep into the ground and the surface runoff is very much reduced (surface runoff is the water that flows on the surface of the forest and eventually ends up in the rivers).

When you clear the forests of trees, rain drops do not have time to seep into the ground and surface runoff is hugely increased. A huge amount of water flows into the rivers, leading to floods downstream. This is why we are seeing more frequent and more sever floods, often leading to loss of lives. So let us save the tress and the trees will save our lives. The photo below illustrate this point very meaningfully:

Note: the photo is widely distributed via email forwarding and the person who forwarded the email to me says she doesn't know the source of the photo. If you are the owner, or knows the owner, please leave a comment regarding the ownership and the use of the photo. If you are the copyright owner, and you want the photo to be removed or require an acknowledgement and/or a link to your website. please let me know by leaving a comment.

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