Cutting down of the rain forests is adversely affecting the ozone layer, but do you know that the increasing hole in the ozone layer is also adversely affecting the growth of the remaining trees?
Each cell in a tree uses just the right amount of sun's energy (measured in wavelengths of light) to convert carbon dioxide and water into sugar and oxygen during photosynthesis.
Each stage of this synthesis process requires different wavelengths or colours of light. Blue light, water and carbon dioxide produces oxygen and sugar and promotes tree growth in width, while red light, water and sugar produces plant cells and promotes height.
If a tree is not receiving critical colors of light between red and blue it is not able to produce chlorophyll (green pigment in plant cells that absorbs solar energy) and will subsequently starve.
Oxygen and ozone together absorb 95 to 99.9% of the sun's ultraviolet radiation, but ozone itself effectively absorbs hard-ultraviolet light (UV-C and UV-B).
As the thinning of the ozone layer in the stratosphere occurs, a larger amount of ultraviolet rays pass through the stratosphere. If a tree is exposed to intense energetic light (hard-ultraviolet and infrared) the tree will suffer damage to its cells, its growth would be inhibited and furthermore could die.
-- Written by Cheral for Life In Balance Article - Dec 2008 / Jan 2009--
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