00:00Let's calm your nervous system. I have some positive climate news.
00:05Scientists have found a way to supercharge the amount of carbon dioxide trees can absorb
00:10by capitalizing on the fact that trees absorb way more CO2 when they're growing.
00:17At a gorgeous but very hot spot overlooking the Panama Canal,
00:22the team spent four years individually fertilizing trees to see how it affected their growth.
00:30They looked at forests that were newly planted compared to forests that were 10, 30, and 600 years old.
00:36They found that in the trees that were less than a year old, nitrogen fertilizer doubled their growth.
00:43The 10-year-old trees grew 50% faster, but the older forests weren't affected by this extra nourishment.
00:52Now, it's pretty time-consuming to fully fertilize large forests,
00:56but luckily, there's another solution.
01:00Forest recovery projects could instead prioritize planting nitrogen-fixing trees,
01:05which are special tree species that team up with bacteria
01:08to draw nitrogen up from the atmosphere and turn it into food that other trees can use.
01:14And with tropical forests being among the biggest carbon-6 we've got,
01:18optimizing their regrowth will go a long way to stabilizing our climate.
01:24This has been a story about a positive climate future.
01:27How does your nervous system feel now?
01:29So question.
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