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.

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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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