What if there was only ONE TREE? | Earth Unplugged

Have you ever wondered how big one tree would need to be to sustain human life? Maddie Moate has the answer..

Zoo La La examines the most incredible animal behaviour from all over the world.

Welcome to Earth Unplugged! We make films about the incredible natural world, we investigate the conundrums, quirks and beautiful science of our amazing planet, delving into the BBC vaults and mixing it up with our own stuff to take a brand new look at Earth.

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[SynytsiaAnton]

So, I plant my self 3 trees on mars and I'm good to go !

[maddiemoate]

Today we ask, "What if there was only one tree?". Meaning, if there was only one tree on earth, how big would it have be to support all human life? Let us know what you think and if there's anything we haven't considered?

[chunyiliu]

Correct me if I am wrong, but I thought algae provide the most of oxygen.

[leetcheet]

You could build a treehouse-city in that massive tree : )

[JohnVKaravitis]

Really Maddie? Is SIZE all that matters with you?  So sad.

[kinorai]

Wow.... This videopretty much sums up why I am in love with this channel! Putting things in perspective is always cool!! Thank you!!

[GigaBoost]

I wish there was a picture where the size of this tree was given context, like having it superimposed behind a well known city, or in a picture taken from space (if it's that big). It would've helped to give context. Still an interesting video though.

[goommenter]

Gosh the humidity on the growing area!

[andreasforster]

The tree would also have to yield a large variety of fruits and house large amounts of different species, because most of the world's food cycles also depend on trees at some point.

[dawidlaszuk]

Assuming the crown is in form of a sphere it's radius would be around 541 km and total volume 663 255 000 km^3. This is so big that all people could live inside leaving 0.1 km^3 or 10^8 m^3 or an area of 1 km (weight) x 1 km (height) x 100 m (tall). That's about 4 times the total volume of Great Pyramid of Giza (2.5x10^7 m^3).

[EmanuelEstradaYarce]

These numbers are almost impossible to process XD. Btw, I love your channel and I like your voice =)

[danielpoopface]

If there was only one tree on earth, I would imagine it would be something like the mother tree named pando I think.

[TheMHB]

'We're going to need a bigger tree' -Chief Brody

Seriously though a lot bigger. There are billions of animals who use much more oxygen than us. As far as I could tell from this video you only worked out how much humans require? Which means the tree would need to be thousands maybe even millions times bigger to support all life.
But nice vid either way :) Very interesting and thought provoking.

[victoriagallo]

Also what about fruit barring trees. Would they all just go away because there is only on tree or would the single tree hold different branches that hold a different fruit?

[TheHarleyEvans]

it could be a collonial set of gargantuan trees (although it has multiple trunks and canopies, technically it'd still be only 1 tree) and maybe it would cover the size of china? (thats just plain old guessing though)

[LeonardGreenpaw]

It would be a clone tree forest. Like the one we already have

[BioniclesaurKingt]

Actually, most of the oxygen forests produce ends up staying within the "airspace" of that forest, being used for cellular respiration by both the animals and plants in the immediate area. Most of the oxygen we breathe actually comes from algae and phytoplankton floating in the ocean.

Also, obligatory "non-tree plants produce oxygen and non-human animals need to breathe, too" statement.

[CraterM]

even with that tree when it comes to moving the oxygen around earth the oxygen would only be in an area around the tree and slowly get thinner and thinner as it moves outward and that would mean that people would have to be in close enough proximity to the tree to receive oxygen, of course wind would help push around oxygen but that would only sever to make there less of it in that area. well that's just for thinking about for 10 seconds so who knows

[adryanarogers]

I think it'd have to be at least more than half the size of the earth in order to sustain life on earth. Maybe bigger.

[telecastersRthebest]

It would have been better if gave us a scale of how big it will look like inside our planet.