Welcome back to Smarter Every Day.

There's a really cool thing happening

on the internet right now and we want you to be a part.

It's called Team Trees and the goal is simple.

20 million trees by 2020

and we actually have a mechanism to do this.

If you go to teamtrees.org

the Arbor Day Foundation has agreed

to plant one tree in the ground

for every dollar that's donated there.

That is a huge opportunity

and internet content creators from all over,

every genre of content, were all working together

to do this but we need you.

We need you to help us do this

by going to teamtrees.org and donating.

Let's say that we're all on board and we're all awesome

and we make this happen.

$20 million go to the Arbor Day Foundation

and they're gonna plant 20 million trees.

How do we do that scientifically?

In order to figure this out,

I wanna go look at this whole concept

through the eyes of my granddaddy

who attempted to plant hundreds of trees

in a field back in the 60s.

My dad was there and he remembers exactly what happened.

(beep)

- Early 60s, '61, '62, Daddy had a group of students

from Auburn come and plant some longleaf pines.

They planted them in different methods,

some in a hill, some in a furrow, hundreds of them.

And only two of them lived.

- Why did Auburn University come here

to plant trees in this field?

- It's not native to this area and Auburn wanted to see

if a longleaf pine could survive this far north.

- [Destin Voiceover] The fact

that longleaf pines were planted here is super interesting

because Granddaddy's land was just north

of the natural range for that species.

Whenever I travel to different regions of the world,

I love to discover what tree species thrive

in that environment, whether it be a strangler fig in Peru,

a baobab tree in western Africa,

or the famous Recoleta rubber tree

in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Certain species of trees always seem

to thrive in certain areas.

To learn more about why certain thrive

in certain environments,

I went to Auburn University School

of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences

where I met with Dr. Becky Barlow and Dr. John Kush.

Both are experts in sustainable forestry

and both know a ton about the longleaf pine.

- [Destin] How does a person find the right tree

for the right location?

Let's say someone lives in Ohio for example,

or they live in, I don't know, Wyoming

and they need to figure out the exact tree

they need to plant on their property.

- The first thing that they need to do is,

like Dr. Kush was saying,

you need to think about the soils.

You need to think about what soils you have.

You need to think about what you are willing to do

from a management standpoint.

How active are you willing to be

in the management of your property?

Some people are just, wanna plant it and walk away

and not have to do anything to it.

And that's okay too and there are certain things

you can do from that standpoint.

But most of the time, you're gonna have to plant it.

Then you're gonna have to monitor it

and you're gonna have to maybe do some thinnings

in there to make sure

that the trees have enough water, light, nutrients

to grow, because they start to get too crowded

and then they're gonna start to die naturally.

And so you wanna thin it

so you don't have that natural mortality.

You can actually capture that mortality.

- [Destin] So there's science to it.

- Yeah, a lot.

And you also need to know about the trees.

You need to think about the tree that you want to plant

and think about its life history,

its silvics is what it's called.

- [Destin] How do you spell that?

- S-I-L-V-I-C-S.

It's kind of its life history.

Where does it normally occur?

Where does it naturally occur?

How does it grow?

How tall does it get?

Does it need a lot of sunlight or can it tolerate shade?

It's those things like that that you need to understand

about the trees that you're wanting to plant

and then making sure you, again,

that's how you match the tree to your site.

- [Destin Voiceover] Dr. Kush pulled up a soil survey

from Granddaddy's land

and explained that the different types of soil affect

how trees grow differently.

He said the main factor, however, was probably

that Granddaddy planted them in a grassy area

where the weeds probably choked out the trees.

- [Destin] So longleaf pine.

- Longleaf pine.

- [Destin] What do I need to know?

- Burn it.

(Destin laughs)

- What?

- Burn it.

- [Destin] What do you mean?

- Plant it, burn it.

- [Destin] What do you mean?

- You gotta use prescribed fire,

get your little area cleaned out,

get your trees planted, wait a year, burn it.

- [Destin] So you're talking about the undergrowth.

- The undergrowth.

- [Destin] Okay so you're not saying,

"Cut the tree down and burn it."

- No, don't cut the tree down.

Please don't cut the tree.

We're doing too much of that already.

- [Destin] Okay so fires can be a good thing

if they're done correctly, is what you're saying.

- Fires are a excellent thing if done correctly.

But we have to do it correctly.

- [Destin] What do you mean?

- You have to prescribe, get your conditions right,

prescribe the fire, get a burn permit

from the Forestry Commission and do what's right for nature.

You're just mimicking what nature did.

If we weren't here it would be happening.

If you have nobody here, get away all the people,

all the roads, and you just have wildlife out there,

a lightning strike hits a tree, starts a fire.

It'd go for miles, tens of miles, hundreds of miles.

So the southeast was seeing fire very frequent

and thus you had longleaf pine there.

- [Destin Voiceover] Dr. Kush explained to me

that the longleaf pine is different.

He explained that it has adapted the ability

to actually be burned during its first few years of life.

Dr. Barlow and Dr. Kush took me outside

to see actual longleaf pines and explain how they work.

- We actually have a longleaf pine in the grass stage here.

- [Dr. Kush] I planted this four years ago.

The idea of trying to bring longleaf pine back to this site.

It passed the stage

where it doesn't really put out any woody extension growth

like all trees do.

It waits for its chance to take fires for a couple years

and then that central bud, it will one day decide

that it's time to come out of the grass stage

and off it will go.

- [Destin] Really?

That is not, - What that--

- [Destin] That is not what I think of

when I think of a small tree.

- It is not.

Any longleaf pine this size can take fire.

Any other tree will die.

- [Destin] So that's why it exists like this.

- That's why it exists like this.

And then when it comes out of that grass stage,

it'll put on four or five feet of growth in that year,

get its quote unquote head above the fire,

and it just hangs out

for the next three, four hundred years.

- [Destin] So this is just a completely different strategy

for survival? - Absolutely.

Unique in the world.

- [Destin Voiceover] When the longleaf pine is

in the grass stage, it's busy making a very deep taproot,

which also means it's drought resistant.

Check out the comparison of this loblolly pine

and this longleaf pine.

- This is only two years old and that's four years old.

- [Destin] We're in 35 days of drought.

Did this die recently?

- Yeah this probably just happened

within the last three or four days.

- [Destin] Oh really? - Yeah.

- [Destin] So we've got some real data here.

- This is real data.

This is actual.

- [Destin] Loblolly pine died because of the drought.

The longleaf pine is just kicking it.

- He's just hanging out saying,

"I'm not quite ready to come out of the grass stage."

What that trigger's gonna be, nobody knows but--

- [Destin] At some point its gonna figure it out.

- My guess just based on the size now,

it's gonna come out next year.

- [Destin Voiceover] Odd as it might sound,

talking to Dr. Kush and Dr. Barlow taught me

that one of the reasons Granddaddy's trees might have died

would've been lack of fire.

Four days after visiting Auburn University,

I'm driving across northern Florida.

Trees on the left side of the road are tall and healthy

but they have burned trunks.

Trees on the right side of the road are crowded

and they look like scrub brush.

It all clicked when I saw this sign.

- I could not have planned this if I tried.

Turns out, there's a place down here

called the E.O. Wilson Biophilia Center.

They're all about the longleaf pine

and I have to show you what I learned.

These people are awesome.

This is Ashlyn. (Ashlyn laughs)

I just found this place.

And I'm seeing that right there,

which leads me to believe that you guys believe in burning

to promote longleaf pine health, is that right?

- Very controlled burning.

- [Destin] Controlled burning. (Ashlyn laughs)

But the whole idea is to get the fuel

at the bottom of the ecosystem

to take out all the scrub brush right?

- Exactly, yes.

- [Destin] Cool and you said there's somebody I can talk to?

- Yeah definitely, we'll find Bob.

- 'Kay we're gonna go see Turtle Bob

who knows about burning longleaf pines.

- Hi. - [Destin] Nice to meet you.

So you know about burning longleaf pines?

- Well, we've burned a few.

(laughter)

- [Ashlyn] Planted a few as well.

- Fire is important

to keep the longleaf pine ecosystem alive

because to start with, it requires bare mineral soil

to start germinating.

And then what it does is it opens it up enough

for gopher tortoises to survive.

Gopher tortoises have to have an open habitat.

- [Ashlyn] This is a gopher tortoise.

- [Destin] And these are the turtles,

or they're not turtles, they're tortoises,

that make the burrows right? - Yes.

- [Destin] And they make the burrows

as a result of the longleaf pine?

- They do make it in that nice open sandy soil

that can be found in the longleaf pine ecosystem.