DEFINE: The climate change challenge I have been given is deforestation. Deforestation is the act of clearing out forest areas. Forests are cleared for many reasons including agriculture, animal grazing and to get wood for fuel, manufacturing and construction, and wildfires. Deforestation has considerably changed landscapes around the world. Approximately 2,000 years ago 80% of Western Europe was forested. Now that percentage has dropped down to 34%. Nowadays, most of the deforestation takes place in tropical rainforests. The main reason why deforestation is a major issue is that the more trees that are cut down, the more carbon dioxide that is emitted into the atmosphere. This is due to the fact that trees take in carbon dioxide to perform photosynthesis.

DISCOVER: Genetically modifying trees isn’t a new concept. In fact, a man named Armand Seguin planted a genetically modified poplar tree over 20 years ago. He designed spruce trees that became immune to deadly pests. Additionally, a group of scientists published a study claiming that they found a way to make trees grow faster and sprout more leaves. They discovered two genes PXY, and CLE, these genes control the outward growth in the tree trunk. They figured out a way to overexpress these genes in poplar trees causing them to grow twice as fast. This resulted in taller, wider, trees with more leaves. If these genes are  found in other spieces of trees, this could significantly reduce CO2 emissions. Lastly, a company called ‘Living Carbon,’ have started growing genetically modified poplar, and pine trees that are capable of soaking up more carbon dioxide than regular trees.

DELIVER:

DEBRIEF: Overall, I think I did pretty good, considering I don’t really play Minecraft. I ran into some challenges like I couldn’t figure out how to make each machine plant more than one tree, so instead, I just made multiple machines If I could do this again, Something else, I could have improved on is the explanation, I could have explained how the machine worked better but I was a bit nervous, and to be honest I am just naturally really bad at explaining things. If I could do this again, I would redo the design and figure out how to make one machine plant multiple trees, as opposed to making multiple machines, and I would rehearse the explanation a bit more.

SOURCES:

National Geographic Society. (2019, July 15). Deforestation. National Geographic Society. Retrieved November 12, 2021, from https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/deforestation/.

Prévost-Manuel , J. ·. (2020, December 20). Genetically engineered trees could help fight climate change – here’s how | CBC news. Retrieved November 12, 2021, from https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/genetic-modification-trees-climage-change-1.5837766#:~:text=Genetically%20engineered%20trees%20could%20help%20fight%20climate%20change,and%20would%20be%C2%A0better%20at%20pulling%20carbon%20from%C2%A0the%20atmosphere.