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Trees are making climate change worse on the Great Plains

We normally think of trees as being good for the environment. But in parts of the Midwest and Great Plains, they're actually heating up the earth as woodlands take over grasslands.

It’s Environment 101: Trees help save the planet. But not everywhere. New research clarifies that deploying trees against global warming backfires in parts of the U.S. and Canada, including much of the Great Plains.

“Trees are great in the right place,” said Susan Cook-Patton, a senior forest restoration scientist at The Nature Conservancy. “But they’re not uniformly awesome across the globe.” Celia Llopis-Jepson of the Kansas News Service brings us that story.

Learn more about prairie conservation on the KCUR podcast Up From Dust.

Contact the show at news@kcur.org. Follow KCUR on Instagram and Facebook for the latest news.

Kansas City Today is hosted by Madeline Fox It is produced by Anna Schmidt and KCUR Studios, and edited by Madeline Fox and Gabe Rosenberg.

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Madeline Fox is the assistant news director for KCUR. Email me at madeline@kcur.org.
Anna Schmidt is the fall 2023 intern for KCUR Studios. She recently graduated from Kansas State University, where she was the Opinions Desk Editor for the Collegian student newspaper and took over the role of podcast host. You can email her at anna.schmidt@kcur.org.
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