Beijing's air pollution helps its trees grow better, faster, stronger, study finds
The Chinese capital’s notorious air pollution may actually help its trees grow more quickly, researchers find
Trees in Beijing grow more quickly in smog than they do under blue skies, Chinese researchers have found.
The government-backed study, published last month in the journal Global Change Biology, tracked the growth rates of six aspen trees in Beijing between 2012 and 2015, when the city was shrouded in some of the thickest smog it has ever seen.
The field observations showed the thicker the smog, the faster and stronger the trees grew.
“It suggests an even more challenging task in coping with climate change while fighting against air pollution in the future,” Liu Lingli, the study’s lead researcher from the Institute of Botany at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, said.
“This is because trees that absorb major greenhouse gas carbon dioxide will grow slower than they did once the aerosol concentration decreases.”