How many trees are needed for humans to breathe in 1 year?
Green plants always release oxygen after completing photosynthesis under the help of sunlight chlorophyll, humans and other high-level animals always need oxygen to maintain life. Since then, the question is how many trees do people need to have enough oxygen to survive in a year? Let's find out with us.
First look at the general equation of photosynthesis:
6CO2 + 12H2O ---> C6H12O6 + 6O2 + 6H2O
We can see, every 6 carbon dioxide molecules will produce 6 oxygen molecules, the molecular ratio is 1: 1. If we calculate by weight, we have about 44 kg of CO2 molecule will produce 32 kg of O2 molecule (molecular mass of CO2 is 44 carbon units of O2 is 32).
Considering that an adult sycamore tree is present in North America, it consumes about 21.7 kg of CO2 on average every year to make photosynthesis. So according to the mass ratio of CO2 to O2, we will calculate the amount of oxygen that a mature sycamore tree produces in 1 year: 21.77 x 32/44 = 15.83 kg.
On average, a person will need 9.5 tons of air to breathe within 1 year, with oxygen accounting for 23% of this amount, That is, one year each of us needs 2,185 O2 tons to survive, assuming the Earth Covered by only the above-mentioned sycamore, the number of trees needed to produce enough oxygen for one person in a year is: 2,185 x 1000 / 15.83 = 138 trees.
If calculated on a worldwide population scale, the number of trees needed to cover all humanity (the current world population is 7.3 billion): 138 x 7.3 = 1007.4 billion trees . A huge number and even it accounts for about one-third of the total greenery on Earth today (3.04 billion trees - according to Nature magazine)!
Photosynthesis is the process of acquiring sunlight energy by plants, algae and some bacteria to create organic compounds that serve themselves as well as a source of food for most organisms on Earth. This process is the only source to create energy to feed all living things on Earth; compensate for the organic substances consumed in the process of life; balance CO2 and O2 in the air; photosynthesis involves all economic activities of people.
