Why We Need Forests: Their Vital Role in Climate Dynamics, Rain, and The Biotic Pump with Anastassia Makarieva

To best understand this episode, please watch this ~2 minute video on the biotic pump.

 

It's widely known that Earth's forests provide home to countless numbers of species, act as a vast sink for carbon, and provide much of the food, materials, and clean water on which our societies rely. But emerging science shows us that forests may play another critical role: making rain. This theory, called the biotic pump theory, hypothesizes that instead of being passive recipients of rain, forests may actively create the conditions for precipitation over land – a premise that turns modern meteorology on...